Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. 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 620: Food and Literature
  Through analysis of literary texts, gourmet guidebooks, paintings, and illustrations, the course maps out and examines questions that have an enduring cultural resonance today, including moral concepts of gluttony and temperance; parallels between appetite and sexuality; and the significance of the terroir or local production. Course explores key events and texts that altered the perception of the gourmand and contributed to the development of gastronomy as an autonomous cultural field.
• MET ML 622: History of Food
  History is part of a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to food studies. Knowing where our food comes from chronologically is just as important as knowing where it comes from geographically. Historical forces bring our food to the table and shape the agricultural practices, labor arrangements and cultural constructions that make meals possible. We will read, research and write food history to explore the ways in which the history of food has shaped our world today, paying careful attention to structural inequalities that restrict food access. We will examine ways in which contemporary questions and problems inform historical inquiries and vice versa. Readings and projects in this course will typically focus on one geographic region but as a class we will be taking into account global connections and influences. The course material is organized both chronologically and thematically, with subthemes such as race, urbanization and industrialization. Students will learn about historical methodology and apply it to their own research.
• MET ML 625: Wild and Foraged Foods
  Humans have been foraging for food since prehistoric times, but the recent interest in wild and foraged foods raises interesting issues about our connection to nature amid the panorama of industrially oriented food systems. From political economy to Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), this course explores how we interact with, perceive, and know our world through the procurement of food. Students take part in foraging activities and hands-on culinary labs in order to engage the senses in thinking about the connections between humans, food, and the environment.
• MET ML 626: Food Waste: Scope, Scale, & Signals for Sustainable Change
  Food waste is a hot topic but not a new one. Some wasted food is the sign of a healthy system-- if there were exactly enough calories produced to meet each of our needs, there would be mass starvation, riots, and hoarding as we all scrambled to get our share. But by some estimates, food loss and waste account for nearly 40% of the food produced. How much wasted food is too much? At the same time this food is wasted, food insecurity is everywhere, even on BU's campus. Is all wasted food "trash?" Need it be? Why is food wasted and where along the supply chain is it wasted? What are the ethics of donating surplus food/waste/trash of those who have too much to those who don't have enough? This hybrid course explores the history, culture, rhetoric, and practicalities of wasted food, from farm, through fork, to gut (is overeating a form of food waste? What about wasting micronutrients by converting them to ultraprocessed foods?). Each week includes readings, discussion, application activity; and several weeks will include a guest lecture from a food system practitioner. Students will develop practical solutions in a final project.
• MET ML 629: Culture and Cuisine of the African Diaspora
  The foodways of the people displaced from the African continent are interwoven with many societies, cultures, and cuisines across the globe. In this course, we will study five geographic regions of Africa; north, central, east, west and south. The list of the countries that encompass each region will follow. Cookbooks, maps, songs, poems, and even some folklore will be used as texts to analyze and add context to the history of the people of the diaspora. This course will have real, and courageous, and respectful conversations including race and power and how those two elements are embedded into the food systems in North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean and Europe. We will trace ingredients that came with the enslaved people and track their integration into cuisines and cultures (agriculture, pop culture, aquaculture etc.) as a collective group and then independently as a capstone course project.
• MET ML 630: Cookbooks and History
  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? Does the analysis of historical cookbooks have contemporary applications? In this course, students will consider these questions through a survey of historical cooking texts and in-class exercises. 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 preparation and 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.
• MET ML 632: History of Wine
  In this course we explore the long and complex role wine has played in the history of human civilization. We survey significant developments in the production, distribution, consumption and cultural uses of grape-based alcoholic beverages in the West. We study the economic impact of wine production and consumption from the ancient Near East through the Roman Empire, Europe in the Middle Ages and especially wine's significance in the modern and contemporary world. Particular focus is on wine as a religious symbol, a symbol of status, an object of trade and a consumer beverage in the last few hundred years.
• MET ML 636: Culture and Cuisine: Italy
  There is no such thing as Italian food. This statement is confirmed by the uniqueness and locality of the foods of Italy. This course will introduce students to regional Italian foods, taking into account geography, historical factors, social mores and language. There will be an emphasis on identifying key food ingredients of northern, central, and southern regions, and how they define these regions and are utilized in classic recipes. In addition, the goal will be to differentiate the various regional cooking styles like casalinga cooking versus alta cucina cooking.
• MET ML 638: Culture and Cuisine: New England
  How are the foodways of New England's inhabitants, past and present, intertwined with the history and culture of this region? In this course, students will have the opportunity to examine the cultural uses and meanings of foods and foodways in New England using historical, archaeological, oral, and material evidence. We will focus on key cultural, religious and political movements that have affected foodways in the region, as well as the movement of people.
• MET ML 641: Anthropology of Food
  This course introduces students to the anthropological study of food and to the concept of food as a cultural system. In this cross-cultural exploration, we will examine the role of food and drink in ritual, reciprocity and exchange, social display, symbolism, and the construction of identity. Food preferences and taboos will be considered. We will also look at the transformative role of food in the context of culture contact, the relationship between food and ideas of bodily health and body image, food and memory, and the globalization of food as it relates to politics, power, and identity. Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I, Research and Information Literacy.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry I
• MET ML 642: Food Ethnography
  This course explores what food ethnography is and how food ethnographers work. Students will learn about food ethnography by reading and discussing its methods and by practicing them. Students will write a research design for an ethnographic project on some aspect of Boston?s multifaceted alternative food system, carry out the research, analyze their data, and write up and orally present the results. Students will learn about and use the methods of participant observation, interviews, photography, food mapping, informant documentation, food logs, and others. They will learn about research ethics. They will pay particular attention to the ways that studying food culture presents unique methods and insights.
• MET ML 649: Fundamentals of Wine
  For students without previous knowledge of wine, this introductory survey explores the world of wine through discussions, tastings, food and wine pairing, assigned readings, and student presentations. By the end of the course, students will be able to exhibit fundamental knowledge of the principal categories of wine, including major grape varieties, wine styles, and regions; correctly taste and classify wine attributes; and demonstrate an understanding of general principles of food and wine pairing.
• MET ML 652: Comprehensive Survey of Wine: Europe
  As one of the core classes in the Wine Studies Program, this intensive course offers detailed knowledge of the wine regions of Europe through tastings, lectures, and assigned readings. Students will discover wine from a historical, cultural, viticultural, ecological, and market perspective. Ideal for wine enthusiasts or those in the industry who are interested in furthering their knowledge. Successfully completing this comprehensive survey course will allow students to exhibit detailed knowledge of European wine regions, grape varieties, and wine styles as well as refine their tasting ability.
• MET ML 653: Grapevine Varieties and Their Varietal Wines
  Graduate Prerequisites: (METML652) - This survey course provides advanced wine students with a thorough knowledge of the wine world's principal and potentially important grapevine varieties and their respective varietal wines. The history of vine varieties, their wines, and their role in the wine trade has become increasingly important as the market for wine has become global. Featured topics are varietal wine sensory characteristics, the diversity of expression of varietal wines from different growing regions, the history of their use, their genetic relationship to other varieties, their use in wine blends, and their performance as varietal wines in the world market. Class tastings focus on examples that showcase each variety's sensory characteristics. How the personal hand of the enological consultant, the winemaker, or the producer influences each example are essential topics of discussion.
• MET ML 654: The Wine Trade: Global, National and Local Perspectives
  Graduate Prerequisites: (METML653) - Gives students an in-depth understanding of issues confronting national wine industries and how these issues relate to the U.S. and local wine trade. Students develop understanding and professional skills by researching assigned topics, participating in teacher-led discussions, and tasting numerous wines under the guidance of instructors. Specialists in the wine trade visit to contribute their expertise and provide an interface to the trade. Students share independent research with classmates by giving presentations and researching relevant topics which highlight issues currently facing the wine industry. The format of this course requires students to do independent research, which may be presented in class and/or submitted in the form of an essay.
• MET ML 655: Launching a Food Business
  Whatever type of food-related business you want to start, you will need expert advice to plan and launch. This course 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. In this section you will focus on writing a business plan utilizing the Lean Canvas methodology (leanstack.com). Grading is based on attendance, participation and completing a Lean Canvas.
• MET ML 657: Advanced Wine Tasting
  This course will develop blind tasting skills through weekly focused tastings. Students will develop the skills to calibrate their tasting acumen, relate their wine theory knowledge to their tasting methodology, and have a chance to taste many categories of wines side by side that are immensely valuable. Focus areas for the tastings include identifying different origins for the same grape varieties, ascertaining quality levels, developing an understanding of how methods of wine production affect wine style, and focusing on grape and region laterals that are commonly difficult to differentiate. At the end of the course, students will have a superior understanding of all the relevant tasting skills required to function at higher levels in the wine trade, wine journalism, and other relevant areas.
• MET ML 658: Introduction to Winemaking
  The course offers students a theoretical and practical understanding of winemaking from grape growing to the aging and bottling of wine. Hands-on experience will accompany discussions related to viticulture, the “crush”, fermentation, aging, maturation, and the business/regulations of wine. Students will observe and analyze wines during the fermentation and aging process to understand how they evolve. Assigned readings, offsite visits, and discussions/guest speakers will aid in a student’s understanding of the art and science of vinification.
• MET ML 671: Food and Visual Culture
  An extensive historical exploration into prints, drawings, film, television, and photography relating to food in the United States and elsewhere. Examines how food images represent aesthetic concerns, social habits, demographics, domestic relations, and historical trends.
• MET ML 672: Food and Art
  Many rituals in diverse parts of the globe were created to gather people around food and eating. For example, the "Sagra" in Italy to celebrate the local seasonal yield, the Bougoule festival that celebrates the first vintage and the Jewish Passover Seder feast, to commemorate the people of Israel's journey in the desert. Food and Art is a course that explores the ingredients of food and eating "experiences'' and channels it through the five senses. In this class we will unpack personal and communal experiences through food and eating and their environments, thereby invoking both past and present. By creating immersive experiences, we aspire to deconstruct the mechanism of eating and to expose the patterns and norms involved. The course will culminate with a communal event, wherein the students will present their research outcomes and insights as installations.