ML610 is the designation for "Special Topics in Gastronomy". The subject matter for ML610 courses changes from semester to semester, and more than one ML610 can be offered in a given semester. Course descriptions for all ML610 sections are listed below. For more information, please contact the department Graduate Student Advisor.

Fall 2015: Topics - TBA.

Spring 2015 - MET ML610 C1 - "Food Memoir" (Dr. Karen Pepper):
Meals are eaten; memories remain: the memories of meals or dishes may serve writers as an armature over which other memories are draped, giving them, in turn, shape and substance. In this course, students--as both readers and writers-- will have the chance to savor the pleasure of food memoir as a literary genre. Both creative writing (a memoir of one's own) and critical writing will be assigned.

Spring 2015 - MET ML610 D1 -"Cookbooks and History" (Dr. Karen Metheny):
What can cookbooks and recipes tell us about an individual? A community? A culture? What does the language of the recipe say about systems of knowledge and ways of thinking about the world? The movement of ingredients and food technology? The transmission of cooking knowledge? In this course, students will consider these questions through a survey of historical cooking texts. We will examine cookbooks as a source of culinary history and a window into the changing material culture, practices, spaces, and relationships associated with food consumption. In addition, students will examine cookbooks and recipes as social documents that reveal the presence of social and economic hierarchies, networks and alliances, and political, economic, and religious structures. We will also examine these documents as cultural texts that reveal the construction of ethnic, gendered, and other identities. Students will study and analyze a selection of cookbooks from different historical periods and geographic regions leading to a final project and paper.