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At the School of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (ASE):

• ANTH 161 Fieldwork Lab
  This workshop-style class offers a hands-on introduction to ethnographic methods, the signature toolkit of cultural anthropology. Students will work individually and collaboratively on small-scale projects. Methods and skills covered will include the key strategy of “participant-observation”; research design; spatial, visual, and discourse analysis; formal and informal interviewing; fieldnote writing and coding; ethnographic writing and other products; and ethical considerations, including those arising from the politics of difference, encounter, experience, and representation as well as the balancing of scholarly, community, and client goals. This year’s research will focus on experiences of household-level wasting of food as part of a new multi-year project designed to broaden awareness of the causes and effects of surplus, overproduction, and waste across the industrial food system. The course is open to students at all levels and counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement. It also counts as the practicum requirement for the Food Systems & Nutrition minor. Monday 1:20-4:20, Cathy Stanton
• ANTH 174 Thinking with Plants
  Explores use of plants as material resources (food, medicines, licit/illicit drugs, infrastructure) and as symbolic resources. Topics include circulation of plants; colonial cultivation, extraction, and power; place of plants in different lived environments and symbolic ecologies; plants, capitalism, and commodity chains; indigenous knowledge, tourism, and biopiracy; commercialization, criminalization and legality; multi-species approaches to living with and among botanicals. Thursday 9-11:30 am, Tatiana Chudakova
• BIO 10/ENV 10 Plants and Humanity
  Principles of botany accenting economic aspects and multicultural implications of plants, their medicinal products, crop potential, and biodiversity. Emphasis placed on global aspects of this dynamic science, with selected topics on acid rain, deforestation, biotechnology, and other applications. Also covered are medicinal, poisonous, and psychoactive species, as well as nutritional sources from seaweeds and mushrooms to mangos and durians. Three lectures. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 9:30-10:20, George Ellmore
• BIO 185/ENV 182 Food for All: Ecology, Technology, Sustainability
  An interdisciplinary examination of the pros and cons of two divergent approaches to meeting the increasing global food demand: organic farming and genetic engineering. Contrasting crops grown in developing and industrialized countries serve as case studies to evaluate: (1) how ecological knowledge makes food production more sustainable; (2) what existing and emerging approaches can, in the face of climate change, contribute to a reliable supply of nutritious food; and (3) the political and economic drivers that shape who has access to these technologies. An important focus is developing communication skills for negotiating stakeholder-specific perspectives (growers, advocacy groups, industry, governmental agencies). Please see departmental website for specific details. Recommendations: Intro Bio or Intro Chemistry or equivalent. Monday 1:20-4:20, Sara Gomez
• BME 173 Cellular Agriculture and Biofabricated Foods
  Introduction to the concepts of cellular agriculture, food science and the use of biotechnology in food production. Laboratory experience in cell culture and biomaterials processing from cell isolation to generation of in vitro meat using tissue engineering techniques. Course culminates in a scientific, creative proposal based on student interests. Monday 6-9 pm, David Kaplan
• ED 14 Food and Schools
  The story of food and schools, investigations into students’ own school experiences as they relate to food and school; the history of food in U.S. schools; the ways by which school food is a battleground for many beliefs about school and society; and how some schools approach feeding students and teaching about nutrition and food. Field work will involve visits to local educational institutions. Tuesday/Thursday 10:30-11:45, Ryan Redmond
• ENV 9 Food Systems
  Introduction to the structure and functions of past, present, and future food systems. Emphasis is placed on the psychological, biological, social, economic and political systems that impact food production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Examination of real-world issues facing stakeholders in the New England food system. Mon/Wed 9-10:15 am, Cathy Stanton
• EXP 11 Animals and American Empire
  What is an animal, what does it mean to be a human, and what is the relationship between the two? What is an empire, and are there ways of living that resist imperial hierarchies? This course contends that the answers to these two sets of questions are inseparable. Looking towards history, anthropology, Black feminist theory, and Indigenous decolonial studies, students will examine the ways that imperialism and animal-keeping have connected across the time-space of American empire. Likewise, the course analyzes how empires have instrumentalized flesh-and-blood animals for settler colonial ends; how animal agency has confounded conquest; and how metaphors as well as material encounters with animals undergird imperial notions of the human. Thursday 6-8:30 pm, Kat Poje
• HIST 5 History of Consumption
  The socio-political history of the use made of goods, food, and energy by different groups through an analysis of class, race, and gender. The course examines economic factors through social and cultural history in order to understand consumption within a global economy. Analysis of social structures in the Americas, China, Europe, India, and the Ottoman Empire, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Mon/Wed 1:30-2:45  plus recitation, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe
• PSY 128 Nutrition and Behavior
  The interactions between nutritional variables and behavior in man and other animals. Effects of obesity, starvation, protein malnourishment, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies on intellectual function and behavior. Influences of diet on brain biochemistry and learning. Tuesday 3-5:30 pm, Grace Giles
• SOC 188 Sociology of Food
  This seminar uses food to interpret, analyze, smell, and taste the social world. What does what we consume tell us about who we are and what we care about? How does food nourish and satisfy, but also cause harm? And why can’t people get enough of food competition TV shows? We’ll consider food structurally and culturally. In the face of globalization, the food system (production, processing, and all the things linking many people that happen before someone takes a bite to eat) and agriculture have changed and adapted. This system is rife with troubling issues (food insecurity, famine, increasing obesity rates, links to carcerality, climate change) but also the site of movements to fight them (food justice and sustainability, food sovereignty, fair trade). As a site of cultural meaning, food is bound up in larger group preferences, how we structure our days, our memories, and hierarchical distinctions. We’ll use all our senses to make sense of these issues, and dive into the world of some popular items (white bread, sugar, coffee, craft beer) and different cuisines. This seminar invites participants to reflect on our own relationship to food and how food is at the heart of the futures we imagine. Wednesday 9-11:30, Freeden Blume Oeur