Food Studies explores how and why food is never just food. Food embodies histories, cultures, landscapes, and literatures. Cooked food made the evolution of the human cranium possible, including the mouth's capacity both for ingestion and expression. From food films, field trials, and the foodoir to food sovereignty, culturally relevant food, and culinary tourism, food is a medium for both eating and thinking.
Racial indigestion? Regenerative agriculture for craft baking and brewing? Radical home economics? Who cooks for whom? Who eats what and how do/don't we eat the same? Who really grows our food?
Food Studies explores how food engenders power and vice-versa. From the politics of hunger to hunger as big business, from diaspora to ethnic cuisine, from breast milk to soy milk, Food Studies both celebrates and investigates what we hunger for and why.
Food Studies reflects eating identities formed through tasting experiences that link sustenance and community through aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures. What flavors the terroir of our campus organic farm tomatoes or the meroir of our geoduck beach oysters? What values shape the menu of our student-run cooperative café?
Internships, travel abroad, field studies, community practices, and research projects will enliven connections between what we eat and who we are.
| Title | Expertise |
|---|---|
| Lal, Prita | food justice, social movements, race/gender/class inequality, Black studies |
| Rosemeyer, Martha | agricultural ecology, food systems |
| Williams, Sarah | Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies |