Subject Areas
The Master of Gastronomy: Food in the World program confer certified, first-level, master degrees, comprising 90 European academic credits. The program last twelve months, with nine months of on-campus and study trips, followed by a three-month internship or research project.
The master programs include tasting workshops on up to fifteen different food products, including wine, beer, bread, cured meat, cheese, tea, and chocolate, among others. Three guided study trips take place during the year, to regions within Italy and abroad.
Course Overview
Approximately 450 hours of coursework is involved in the program. Courses are given in the form of seminars, lectures, and discussions, and cycle rapidly from subject to subject.
Food and the Environment, Prof. Colin Sage (University of Cork)
This course will explore some of the complex interconnections between what we eat and how this affects the Earth’s resources. The global food system is a major contributor to climate change and freshwater depletion and has a major bearing on fossil fuel consumption. The course will examine some of the principal drivers that deny nutritional security for all, as well as the growing numbers of initiatives around the world working to relocalise food and to build more sustainable food futures.
Sustainable Agriculture, Prof. Pablo Tittonell (Wageningen University)
The essence of this course will be to develop the links between ecological conceptualizations and design and management of sustainable farming systems. The course will analyse the ecological, economical, social aspects of sustainable agriculture and food systems, the concepts of sustainability and agricultural sustainability, as well as how these principles can be translated
into practices and decision making.
Cultural Ecology, Prof. Rick J Stepp (University of Florida)
This module will introduce the study of the interrelationship between humans and their biophysical environments. The module will take a broad perspective of humans across all space and time and will address human perception, cognition and behaviour related to the environment and the linkages between biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. The course will try to creatively apply aspects of the aforementioned conceptualizations to their own interests and studies/projects.
Food and Public Health, Prof. Stanley Ulijaszek (University of Oxford)
The course will examine nutrition transition theory, which describes major changes in the nutritional health of human populations which are determined by the interplay of economic, demographic, environmental and cultural change. Within this scheme the course will in-depth evaluate five patterns of nutritional health that societies may progress through, starting with formations prior to the emergence of agriculture when hunting and gathering predominated.
Food History, Prof. Jeffrey Pilcher (University of Toronto)
The course focuses the major turning points and landmark changes in the world history of agriculture, food processing, food marketing, food consumption, and food politics. The course insists in particular on the history of food mobility and exchange, from the Columbian Exchange promoted by the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in 1492 to the globalization of food in the early twenty-first century.
The Anthropology of Food, Prof. David Sutton (Southern Illinois University)
Food is a vital part of our identity, daily life, and social interactions on many different levels. Food defines and shapes human groups and cultures and their visions of the world. The course introduces students to the centrality of food in the human experience, at the intersection of nature and culture. It explore anthropological theories about and methods to study foodways – the beliefs and behaviors surrounding food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption – with a particular analytical attention to race, class, and gender as determining factors in shaping them.
Food Sociology and Multiculturalism, Prof. Krishnendu Ray (New York University)
This course offers an overview of the contributions of sociological thinking in the theoretical and methodological understanding of food, as well as an exploration of the social relations activated through food consumption and sharing, in the public and domestic dimensions. Special attention is paid to food a means of identity formation and “consumption of the other’s” cultural difference.
Food Philosophy, Prof. David Kaplan (University of Northern Texas, USA)
This class will examine the philosophical dimensions of the production, distribution, and consumption of food. We will discuss what food is (metaphysics), how we experience food (epistemology), what taste in food is (aesthetics), how we should make and eat food (ethics), how governments should regulate food (politics), how scientific knowledge and technical expertise affects food (philosophy of science and technology), and how food influences who and what we are (existentialism).
Food Justice, Prof. Josè Esquinas (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, FAO)
The course offers a wide panoramic of the global politics regulating the production, exchange, distribution, and safety of the supply of food. National governments and their agencies have been primary actors in the regulation of the food market, but international connections have increased exponentially in the last decades because of the growing globalization of food systems, development of global food commodity chains, impact of rural development on global climate, land grabbing, GMO agriculture, corporate food multinational take on the food supply, regulations of food labeling, just to name a few of the most relevant issues and processes. The course will introduce students to the principal data and theories shaping our knowledge of the global politics of food and eating.
Food and Social Movements, Prof. Parvathi Raman (SOAS University of London)
A number of international, state- and non-state actors have taken on the global issues of hunger, food sustainability, food sovereignty, and food security. The conteporary global politics of food is a field in which different, sometimes competitive, agencies are at work—from FAO to the IMF and The World Bank. Within such context, the course focuses in particular the agendas, activities, and struggles of non-state, non-party actors, from associations like Slow Food to international peasant movements like La Via Campesina.
Food Writing, Prof. Corby Kummer (The Atlantic)
Food has become one of the most important topic in contemporary culture. A wide variety of media “talk” about food, each of them using different approaches and specialist languages: from TV cooking shows, to specialized food and cuisine magazines, food blogs, cookbooks, newspaper food & cooking sections, restaurant reviews, travel guides, and so on. Besides offering an overview of the opportunities opened to food students to work with these media, the course introduces students to the practical craft of writing about food, offering examples of how to articulate and structure food texts that effectively engage interested audiences.
Food and Globalization, Prof. Amy Bentley (New York University)
This course examines the complex ways in which globalization has shaped contemporary food systems. It outlines theories and histories of globalization using concepts such as cultural imperialism, de- territorialization, global consciousness, hegemony, hybridity, localization, McDonaldization, and neoliberalism; it explores the politics of governance within the global food system and resistance movements against globalization; and it looks at the effects of globalization on individual, ethnic, national, and diasporic identities.
Themes in Food Anthropology, Prof Cesare Poppi
Molecules and Their Taste, Prof Gabriella Morini
The course will provide the necessary notions to recognize at molecular level the main component of food (carbohydrates, lipids, proteins), and to understand the mechanisms at the basis of the transformations which occur in food during the various phases of its production and gastronomic transformation. Another focus of the course will be taste, the guardian and guide for our food consumption. The preferred qualities of sweet, umami, salty and fatty encourage us to eat foods containing carbohydrates, amino acids, sodium and fats, while bitter and sour deter us from ingesting potential toxic substances. Bioactive components with specific taste characteristics present in food will be described. The influence of genetic and eating habits on taste preferences and food choice (and therefore on nutrition and health) will be underlined, together with the need and ways to educate the sense of taste in our food environment.
Food & Wine Tasting, Unisg Visiting Professor Mirco Marconi
The Food and Wine Tasting field deals with the production of food and beverages and their taste qualities. It does not only link Food Technology and tasting, but considers the other essential aspects that determine the quality of the finished product: raw materials, the soil and climatic conditions (terroir), as well as environmental and social sustainability. The aim of this field is to consider all of the most important food and drink items, with particular reference to processed products with classes focusing more on foreign products. There are, for example, courses on French and Iberian wines and cheeses, Anglo-Saxon and Belgian beers, Scottish and French spirits, green Japanese tea and sake.
Master of Gastronomy: Food in the World
European Foodscapes:
– Folk cuisines in Scandinavia
– Food in Scotland
– Wild foods in the old and new Estonian Cuisine
– European Wines and Cuisines: Styles and Approaches from an Aesthetic Perspective
Near and Middle Eastern Foodscapes
– The Past and Present of the Iraqi Cuisine
– Kuwaiti Eco-Gastronomy
– Food Ethnobotany and Ethnobiology in Kurdistan
South Asian Foodscapes
– The History of Curry
– NE Indian Indigenous Food Systems
– Food, Culture, and History in the South Asian Kitchen
Central and East Asian Foodscapes
– A History of the Chinese Cuisine
– Japanese Traditional Fermented Foods
– The Science of the Umami Taste
African Foodscapes
– A History of African Cuisine
– Pastoralism in Ethiopia
– Entomophagy in Africa
North American Foodscapes
– Indigenous Food Culture and Knowledge in the Southern US
– Food, Equity and Access: A California Lens
– History of Italian American Food Culture
South American Foodscapes
– Indigenous and Diasporic Foods in Argentina and Paraguay
– Contemporary Gastronomies in Latin America
– The Human Ecology of Traditional Foods in Brazil
Oceanian Foodscapes
– The Food Anthropology of New Caledonia and Pacific Islands
– Food in Australia
Course listing subject to change
