Food Studies


Faculty List
  • D. Bender, M.A., Ph.D. (New York), Professor
  • M. Ekers, B.Sc., (Lakehead), M.E.S. (York), Ph.D. (Oxford), Assistant Professor (Department of Human Geography)
  • M. Isaac, Ph.D. (Toronto), Professor (Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences)
  • R. Isakson, Ph.D. (Massachusetts, Amherst), Associate Professor (Department of Global Development Studies)
  • K. MacDonald, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (Waterloo), Associate Professor (Department of Human Geography)
  • L. Mortensen, B.A. (Cornell), M.A., Ph.D. (Indiana), Assistant Professor (Department of Anthropology)
  • J. Pilcher, M.A. (New Mexico State), Ph.D. (Texas Christian), Professor
  • J. Sharma, M.A. (Delhi), M.Phil. (Delhi), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Associate Professor

Effective July 1, 2024, the administration of the Minor program in Food Studies and the undergraduate-level FST courses has been moved from the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (HCS) to the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (DPES).

Undergraduate Advisor Email: fst.undergrad.advisor.utsc@utoronto.ca

For more information, visit the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences website.

Food Studies is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding where our food comes from and how it shapes our bodies and identities. The Minor Program in Food Studies focuses on five basic themes: global food cultures, flavour, health, sustainability, and food justice while drawing from a number of disciplinary methodologies. Courses will span all of human history, from our foraging ancestors to the contemporary industrial food system, and around the world, examining diverse cultural traditions of farming, cooking, and eating.

Particular attention will be given to the material nature of food, the way it tastes and smells, and the changes caused by cooking, preservation, and rotting. Tutorials and seminars will meet in the Culinaria Kitchen Laboratory (SW313) to provide experiential learning and small group discussion.

The program will also leverage the university’s urban location to use Scarborough as a classroom to understand the rich traditions and special challenges involved in feeding diasporic communities.

Food Studies provides both theoretical understanding and practical knowledge for professional careers in health care, business, communications, government service, non-governmental organizations, teaching, and community programs.

For updates and detailed information regarding Food Studies, please visit the Food Studies Program website.

Food Studies Courses:

Note: Students are advised to consult the prerequisites for B-, C-, and D-level courses when planning their individual program.

Experiential Learning and Outreach

For a community-based experiential learning opportunity in your academic field of interest, consider the course CTLB03H3, which can be found in the Teaching and Learning section of the Calendar.

Food Studies Programs

MINOR PROGRAM IN FOOD STUDIES (ARTS) - SCMIN0580

To contact the Undergraduate Advisor please email: fst.undergrad.advisor.utsc@utoronto.ca

Program Requirements
Students must complete at least 4.0 credits in Food Studies-focused courses, including the following:

1. FSTB01H3 Methodologies in Food Studies

2. An additional 3.5 credits, of which at least 2.0 credits must be at the C- or D-level

 

Food Studies, Climate Change Studies Courses

FSTA01H3 - Foods That Changed the World

This course introduces students to university-level skills through an exploration of the connections between food, environment, culture, religion, and society. Using a food biography perspective, it critically examines ecological, material, and political foundations of the global food system and how food practices affect raced, classed, gendered, and national identities.

Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

FSTA02H3 - Food Futures: Confronting Crises, Improving Lives

This course provides innovation and entrepreneurship skills to address major problems in socially just food production, distribution, and consumption in the time of climate crisis. Students will learn to identify and understand what have been called “wicked problems” -- deeply complicated issues with multiple, conflicting stakeholders -- and to develop community-scale solutions.

Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

FSTA03H3 - Wines of the World

This class will introduce students to the wine regions of the world. They will learn methods of grape cultivation and wine making, the fundamentals of viticulture, cultures of terroir, tasting skills, marketing strategies, and the effects of climate change.

Breadth Requirements: Natural Sciences
Note: Students must be above 19 years old to participate in wine tasting sessions.

FSTB01H3 - Methodologies in Food Studies

This course, which is a requirement in the Minor program in Food Studies, provides students with the basic content and methodological training they need to understand the connections between food, culture, and society. The course examines fundamental debates around food politics, health, culture, sustainability, and justice. Students will gain an appreciation of the material, ecological, and political foundations of the global food system as well as the ways that food shapes personal and collective identities of race, class, gender, and nation. Tutorials will meet in the Culinaria Kitchen Laboratory.

Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Course Experience: University-Based Experience
Note: Priority will be given to students in the Minor program in Food Studies.

FSTB14H3 - Why We Cook

An exploration of how eating and cooking traditions around the world have been affected by economic, environmental, and social changes, including imperialism, migration, climate change, and urbanization. Topics include: immigrant cuisines, commodity exchanges, and the rise of the restaurant. Tutorials focus on exploring cooking traditions from across time and around the world. exploration of how eating traditions around the world have been affected by economic and social changes, including imperialism, migration, the rise of a global economy, and urbanization. Lectures will be supplemented by cooking demonstrations.

Exclusion: (HISB14H3)
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

FSTC02H3 - Mondo Vino: The History and Culture of Wine Around the World

This course explores vine cultivation and wine making, marketing, and consumption around the world, linking it to challenges of social, cultural, and environmental sustainability. This course includes in-class tastings

Prerequisite: FSTB01H3
Recommended Preparation: At least 1.0 credit at the B-level or higher in FST courses
Breadth Requirements: Natural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience
Note: Priority will be given to students in the Minor Program in Food Studies Minor program and programs in Environmental Studies. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC05H3 - Feeding the City: Food Systems in Historical Perspective

This course puts urban food systems in world historical perspective using case studies from around the world and throughout time. Topics include provisioning, food preparation and sale, and cultures of consumption in courts, restaurants, street vendors, and domestic settings. Students will practice historical and geographical methodologies to map and interpret foodways.

Same as HISC05H3

Prerequisite: Any 4.0 credits, including 0.5 credit at the A or B-level in CLA, FST, GAS HIS or WST courses
Exclusion: HISC05H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

FSTC13H3 - Food Policy and Nutritional Health

Through engagement with policymakers, researchers, and industry stakeholders, this course explores the political economy of the Canadian food system and, broadly, global food systems. The course provides an introduction to the commercial determinants of health and relevant theoretical frameworks; examines the role of private industry in the research and policymaking process; explores the role of power within political and economic structures that affects human behaviour, preferences, and culture; and presents examples of current research related to corporate influence of food policies in Canada and globally.

Prerequisite: 4.0 credits or FSTB01H3
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies, Environmental Studies, and Health Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC15H3 - Food Justice

This course will help students learn to identify inequalities around food and gain skills to help ensure broad access to healthy, sustainable, and culturally appropriate food. Frameworks will include race, gender, class, indigeneity, and generational differences.

Prerequisite: FSTB01H3
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies and Environmental Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC24H3 - Gender in the Kitchen

Across cultures, women are the main preparers and servers of food in domestic settings; in commercial food production and in restaurants, and especially in elite dining establishments, males dominate. Using agricultural histories, recipes, cookbooks, memoirs, and restaurant reviews and through the exploration of students’ own domestic culinary knowledge, students will analyze the origins, practices, and consequences of such deeply gendered patterns of food labour and consumption.


Prerequisite: 8.0 credits, including [0.5 credit at the A or B-level in FST courses]
Exclusion: WSTC24H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in Food Studies, and Environmental Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC29H3 - Global Foods, Local Seeds

This course explores familiar foods - from field to plate and microbiome - as plants, seeds, crops, comestibles, commodities, and nutrients. Case-studies select from chocolate, tea, coffee, sugar, grains, and produce. Topics include socio-cultural, socio-political, and nutritional transitions, evolving supply chains, and climate change impact on production and consumption.

Prerequisite: Any 9.5 credits
Exclusion: HISC29H3
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies and Environmental Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC37H3 - Eating and Drinking Across the Americas

Students in this course will examine the development of regional cuisines in North and South America. Topics will include indigenous foodways, the role of land expropriation, commodity production and alcohol trade in the rise of colonialism, the formation of national cuisines, industrialization, migration, and contemporary globalization. Tutorials will be conducted in the Culinaria Kitchen Laboratory.


Prerequisite: Any 4.0 credits
Exclusion: (HISC37H3)
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies, and Environmental Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTC43H3 - Social Geographies of Street Food

This course uses street food to comparatively assess the production of ‘the street’, the legitimation of bodies and substances on the street, and contests over the boundaries of, and appropriate use of public and private space. It also considers questions of labour and the culinary infrastructure of contemporary cities around the world.

Same as GGRC34H3

Prerequisite: FSTA01H3 or GGRA02H3 or GGRA03H3
Exclusion: GGRC41H3 (if taken in the 2019 Winter and 2020 Winter sessions), GGRC43H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

FSTC54H3 - Eating and Drinking Across Global Asia

Students examine historical themes for local and regional cuisines across Global Asia, including but not limited to Anglo-Indian, Arab, Bengali, Chinese, Himalayan, Goan, Punjabi, Japanese, Persian, Tamil, and Indo-Caribbean. Themes include religious rituals, indigenous foodways; colonialism, industrialization, labour, gender, class, migration, globalization, and media. Tutorials are in the Culinaria Kitchen Lab.

Prerequisite: Any 4.0 credits, including 0.5 credit at the A- or B-level from CLA, FST, GAS, HIS or WST courses
Exclusion: (GASC54H3), (HISC54H3) 
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences

FSTD01H3 - Independent Studies: Senior Research Project

This option is available in rare and exceptional circumstances to students who have demonstrated a high level of academic maturity and competence. Qualified students will have the opportunity to investigate a topic in Food Studies that is of common interest to both student and supervisor.

Prerequisite: At least 10.0 credits, including FSTB01H3, and written permission from the instructor.
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

FSTD02H3 - Special Topics in Food Studies

This seminar will expose students to advanced subject matter and research methods in Food Studies. Each seminar will explore a selected topic.

Prerequisite: Any 8.0 credits including 1.0 credit from the Food Studies Courses Table
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

FSTD10H3 - Food Writing

This course introduces students to a range of writing about food and culture, exposing them to different genres and disciplines, and assisting them to experiment with and develop their own prose. The course is designed as a capstone offering in Food Studies, and as such, asks students to draw on their own expertise and awareness of food as a cultural vehicle to write in a compelling way about social dynamics, historical meaning, and - drawing specifically on the Scarborough experience - the diasporic imaginary.

Prerequisite: FSTB01H3
Breadth Requirements: Arts, Literature and Language
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Minor program in Food Studies. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTD11H3 - Food and Media: Documenting Culinary Traditions Through Photography and Videography

This course combines elements of a practicum with theoretical approaches to the study and understanding of the place of food in visual culture. It aims to equip students with basic to intermediate-level skills in still photography, post-processing, videography, and editing. It also seeks to further their understanding of the ways in which scholars have thought and written about food and the visual image, with special emphasis on the “digital age” of the last thirty years.

Prerequisite: FSTB01H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

FSTD12H3 - Cuisine, Culture, Ecology

This course examines the central place of cuisine and ecology to cultures around the world, with a focus on community growing, home cooking, food preservation, and experiences of gardens, restaurants, kitchens and marketplaces. Learning methods include oral interviews, field trips, sensory tasting and cooking sessions, multi-media experiential learning, as well as critical reading and writing.

Prerequisite: 9.5 credits
Exclusion: GASD72H3
Recommended Preparation: FSTA01H3 or FSTA02H3 or FSTB01H3
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies, Environmental Studies, and Environmental Sciences programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

FSTD16H3 - Field Course in Food Studies

Experiential learning in Food Studies is critical for understanding the complexities of the global food system. This course provides exciting and inspiring experiential learning opportunities with food innovators across Canada and internationally. The course entails a 7-10-day field camp with destinations potentially changing yearly, that prioritizes innovative production methods, agroecological understanding, food cultures and communication, and taste analysis.

Prerequisite: Permission of the Instructor
Breadth Requirements: Social and Behavioural Sciences
Course Experience: University-Based Experience
Note: Priority will be given to students enrolled in the Food Studies, Environmental Studies programs. Additional students will be admitted as space permits.

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