Farms, Factories, and Food

From the 16th century to the present, this course explores the making of the modern global food system. This course uses case studies of plants’ and animals’ journeys from farms to dinner plates and how they changed over time to illuminate major themes in the development of the modern world and the contemporary global food system. This course uses these case studies to explore the social, cultural, economic, political, and ecological relationships formed in and around food production, distribution, and consumption. Insights from history, cultural anthropology, ecology, political economy, and rural studies are discussed in this course.