Gastronomy

  • 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
  • MET ML 800: Master's Project
    Students nearing the completion of their degree requirement for the MLA in Gastronomy may register for the Masters Project. This graduation requirement is available for students who entered the MLA program during or after Fall 2009. The Masters Project must be completed under the direction of a full- time Boston University faculty member. The coordinator of the Gastronomy program must approve a topic, outline, bibliography and schedule for the project. Please contact the program coordinator for further details and guidelines. Students must also concurrently enroll in ML 802. 2 cr.
  • MET ML 801: Master's Thesis I
    Graduate Prerequisites: For M.L.A. students only.
    Students nearing the completion of their degree requirement for the MLA in Gastronomy may register for the Master's Thesis. The Master's Thesis must be completed under the direction of a full-time Boston University faculty member. The coordinator of the Gastronomy program must approve a topic, outline, bibliography and schedule for the project. Please contact the program coordinator for further details and guidelines. 4 cr.
  • MET ML 803: Master's Thesis II
    Students nearing the completion of their degree requirement for the MLA in Gastronomy may register for the Master's Thesis. The Master's Thesis must be completed under the direction of a full-time Boston University faculty member. The coordinator of the Gastronomy program must approve a topic, outline, bibliography and schedule for the project. Please contact the program coordinator for further details and guidelines. 4 cr.