Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• MET ML 699: Laboratory in the Culinary Arts: Baking
  In this introductory course in the pastry arts, students will learn the history and fundamentals of baking through lecture, demonstration, and full, hands-on participation. Topics covered will include, but are not limited to: the characteristics and function of ingredients; how to properly scale and measure ingredients; and preparing classic pastries such as puff pastry, Paris-Brest, kouign amann, brioche, pavlova, biscotti, roulade, clafoutis, chocolate babka, dacquoise, charlottes, fresh fruit galettes, Victoria sponges, and financiers.
• MET ML 700: Culinary Arts Laboratory
  This intensive, semester-long culinary program combines the best aspects of traditional culinary arts study with hands-on instruction from highly acclaimed professional chefs and food industry experts. Master basic classic and modern techniques, explore various cultures and cuisines and learn theories of food production in BU's state-of-the-art laboratory kitchen. Upon successful completion, students receive a Certificate in the Culinary Arts from Boston University.
• MET ML 701: Introduction to Gastronomy
  This course is designed to introduce students to current and foundational issues in food studies and gastronomy. Through this focus on central topics, students will engage directly in the interdisciplinary method that is central to food studies. Each week will introduce a unique view of the holistic approach that is central to a liberal arts approach to studying food and a new research technique will be presented and put into practice through the readings and course exercises. This course will give Gastronomy students a better understanding of the field as a whole. While providing an overview and methodological toolbox, it will act as a springboard in to areas of specialization of the course. 4 credits.
• MET ML 704: Special Topics
  Fall 2016 - MET ML704 S1 - Special Topic: "Launching Your Food Business."
  Whatever type of food-related business you want to start, you will need expert advice to plan and launch. This class will guide you through the process of developing and realizing your business idea. Guest speakers from the food industry will share hands- on knowledge and insights. Students will develop a Lean Canvas (leanstack.com) and focus on preparing an "investor deck" - a presentation for potential investors, partners or customers. Grading is based on attendance, participation, completing a Lean Canvas, and a final presentation during the final class meeting. This class can be taken as a follow on to ML 655 S1, "Planning a Food Business" or as a stand-alone class.
• MET ML 705: Artisan Cheeses of the World
  An in-depth exploration of the styles and production of cheeses from regions around the world, from their beginnings on the farm to the finished products at the table. 2 cr
• MET ML 706: Food and Gender
  In Food and Gender we will explore ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms. Using frameworks developed in gender studies we will interrogate our contemporary foodscape through close readings of many media, including food blogs, magazines, TV shows and advertisements. The course will include reading, research, field work, discussion, and cooking to help us understand why and how food has been gendered and how the process differs across place, time, and culture.
• MET ML 707: Directed Study
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of coordinator.
  Students may work with a full-time Boston University faculty member to complete a Directed Study project on a topic relevant to the program. These projects must be arranged with and approved by Gastronomy program coordinator.
• MET ML 708: Directed Study
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of coordinator.
  Prereq: consent of coordinator.
• MET ML 711: The Many Meanings of Meat
  There is perhaps no foodstuff more prized than meat, and there is none more problematic. Consider its metaphorical contradictions. To go to the "meat of the matter" is to cut to the essence of things, the most important item on the agenda. Yet to be "treated like meat" is to be regarded as subordinate, subservient, an object for exploitation. Long associated with power, masculinity, vitality, and progress, meat is also linked to imperialism, sexism, speciesism, environmental collapse, foodborne disease, and chronic illness. In this comprehensive overview we will examine meat's many historical, cultural, economic, ecological, ethical, and nutritional dimensions.
• MET ML 712: Food and Society
  Examines the role of food in society and how it shapes identity and structures our lives. Explores multiple contexts of food production, access, procurement, and consumption, including rural agricultural sites, urban homesteads, grocery shopping, CSAs, and food assistance programs, and the intersection of food practices with class, ethnicity, race, and gender.
• MET ML 714: Urban Agriculture
  Growing food in urban contexts raises interesting questions about food access, nutrition education, perceptions of public spaces and the place of nature in the urban environment. This course focuses on urban agriculture in Boston and a number of case studies from around the globe. Students visit gardens, learn basic cultivation skills through hands-on activities, and study the social and cultural sides of urban agriculture, as well as the political and city planning aspects of urban agriculture projects. 4 cr.
• MET ML 715: Food and the Senses
  This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the sensory foundations and implications of food. We will study the senses as physical and cultural phenomena, the evolving concepts of terroir and craft, human nutritional and behavioral science, sensory perception and function, and the sensory and scientific aspects of food preparation and consumption. Understanding these processes, constructions and theories is key to understanding a vast array of food-related topics; cheese-making, wine-tasting, fermentation, food preservation, culinary tools and methods, cravings and food avoidance, sustainability and terroir, to name just a few.
• MET ML 716: Sociology of Taste
  Taste has an undeniable personal immediacy: producing visceral feelings ranging from delight to disgust. As a result, in our everyday lives we tend to think about taste as purely a matter of individual preference. However, for sociologists, our tastes are not only socially meaningful, they are also socially determined, organized, and constructed. This course will introduce students to the variety of questions sociologists have asked about taste. What is a need? Where do preferences come from? What social functions might our tastes serve? Major theoretical perspectives for answering these questions will be considered, examining the influence of societal institutions, status seeking behaviors, internalized dispositions, and systems of meaning on not only what we enjoy--but what we find most revolting.
• MET ML 719: Food Values: Local to Global Food Policy, Practice, and Performance
  Reviews various competing and sometimes conflicting frameworks for assessing what are "good" foods. Examines what global, national, state, and local food policies can do to promote the production and consumption of these foods. Participants learn how to conceptualize, measure, and assess varying ecological, economic, nutritional, health, cultural, political, and justice claims. Students analyze pathways connecting production and consumption of particular foodstuffs in the U.S. and the world. Emphasis is on comparative food systems and food value chains, and the respective institutional roles of science and technology, policy, and advocacy in shaping food supply and demand.
• MET ML 720: Food Policy and Food Systems
  This course presents frameworks and case studies that will advance participants' understandings of U.S. and global food systems and policies. Adopting food-systems and food-chain approaches, it provides historical, cultural, theoretical and practical perspectives on world food problems and patterns of dietary and nutritional change, so that participants acquire a working knowledge of the ecology and politics of world hunger and understand the evolution of global-to-local food systems and diets. Global overview of world food situations will be combined with more detailed national and local-level case studies and analysis that connect global to local food crisis and responses.
• MET ML 721: US Food Policy and Culture
  This course overviews the forces shaping U.S. food policies, cultural politics, diet, and nutrition situations in the twenty-first century. After reviewing the history of U.S. domestic food policy, course discussions consider globalization, new agricultural and food technologies, new nutrition knowledge, immigration, and "sustainable-food" ideology as drivers of American dietary and food-regulatory change. "Food systems," "food chains," and "dietary structure" provide the major analytical frameworks for tracing how food moves from farm to table, and the role of local through national government and non-government institutions in managing these food flows.
• MET ML 722: Studies in Food Activism
  In this class students will explore the work of anthropologists and other social scientists on food activism citizens' efforts to promote social and economic justice through food practices and challenge the global corporate agrifood system. The class will explore diverse individual and collective forms of food activism including veganism, gleaning, farmers' markets, organic farming, fair trade, CSAs, buying groups, school gardens, anti-GMO movements, Slow Food, Via Campesina, and others. It will address the questions: what is food activism, what are its goals, what is working and not working, and what are the results?
• MET ML 723: Sustainable Food Systems
  Sustainability, will examine the contemporary food system through a multi- disciplinary lens. The course will allow students to put readings and ideas into culinary practice. By examining the often-competing concerns from other domains, including economic (both micro and macro), social welfare, social justice and social diversity, health and wellness, food security and insecurity, and resiliency, we can begin to move towards solutions that treat the disease (our food system) and not just the symptoms (domain specific issues). Students will read widely in the topic area, engage in classroom discussion, and work together in the kitchen to understand hands- on culinary approaches to some of the most important issues of our time.
• MET ML 730: Pastry Arts Level 2
  
• MET ML 731: Culinary Arts Level 2