2024-2025 Catalog

Food Studies

Overview

Food studies is a burgeoning, interdisciplinary, inherently politicized field of scholarship, practice, and art that examines the relationship between food and all aspects of the human experience, including culture and biology, individuals and society, global pathways and local contexts. 

The minor invites the growing number of students interested in food to advance their research and classroom studies of complex food related issues across a broad range of curricula. The program provides a curricular offering and intellectual framework to complement the co-curricular energy around food on campus, increasing the rigor and discipline with which students use food as a lens for exploration and critical thinking. 

With exposure to interdisciplinary resources across the breadth of liberal arts, students will learn to: 

  • Understand the complex contemporary and historical factors that affect food production and consumption as well as human physiological dietary needs.
  • Consider food system options, comparing their environmental, sociocultural, economic, and health impacts. 
  • Think critically about food and agricultural challenges and recommendations.
  • Develop ideas about how they can contribute to food system solutions and explore multiple pathways to transformation.

Requirements

Minor

Students must complete 20 units of food-related courses. Courses must be taken from a minimum of two different departments. At least three courses applied to the food studies minor must be taken outside the student’s major program.

Students must complete at least one course from the following:

KINE 210Nutrition and Homeostasis

4 units

PUBH 220Public Health Nutrition

4

SOC 240Sociology of Food

4 units

UEP 306Food and the Environment

4 units

Electives

In addition to the courses listed above, students may select courses from the list below:

COGS 280Food, Drugs, Sex, and the Brain

4

DWA 283Soft Power: How Nations Interact Without War

4 units

HIST 346The Transformation of Urban and Rural China

4 units

HIST 358/LLAS 358Food and Drink in Mexican History

4 units

KINE 210Nutrition and Homeostasis

4 units

KINE 298Community Health and Fitness Research

2 units

KINE 306Biochemistry of Exercise and Energy

4 units

KINE 398Community Health and Fitness Research

2 units

PHIL 395Philosophy Seminar

4 units

PSYC 420Psychology of Addiction

4 units

RELS 205Holy Sh*t!: Engaging the Materiality of Religion

4 units

UEP 101Environment and Society

4 units

UEP 240Urban Sustainability: Raising Animals as a Part of Regenerative Agriculture

2 units

UEP 246Sustainable Oxy

2 units

UEP 247Sustainable Oxy: Urban Agriculture and Sustainable Landscape Practicum

2 units

UEP 303Sustainable Development

4 units

UEP 390/LLAS 390Los Angeles and the Global Food Economy

4

Students may also apply MUSC 385 as an elective for the Food Studies minor if they have enrolled in the "Music and Food" section of the course.

Students may also apply PSYC 490 as an elective for the Food Studies minor if they have enrolled in the "Eating: From Cells to Society" section of the course.

Only select topics of UEP 295 and PHIL 395 have been approved to apply as an elective. See program chair for more information. Students must file the appropriate paperwork with the Registrar's Office in order to apply this course to the minor.

Transfer Credit Policies

Courses approved for transfer by the appropriate department or program will be considered to apply toward the Food Studies minor. Students should reference the Transfer Credit section for details.

Faculty

Carmel Levitanchair

Professor 

B.A., Stanford University; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Other faculty associated with the Food Studies minor can be viewed here.