Summer Courses Spotlight
With warmer weather around the corner, we are spotlighting some of the exciting elective courses that students will be able to take this summer semester. Check them out below:
METML 702S E1, Special Topics in Food & Wine: Food, Documentary & Advocacy will be taught by Dr. Potter Palmer in Summer 2025. This online course will meet once a week from 5/6 through 6/23 (meeting times TBA).
Through an exploration of seminal works in the genre, this course will explore the intricate interplay between food, documentary filmmaking, and advocacy. The course will equip participants with the theoretical frameworks, practical skills, and a deeper understanding of visual storytelling necessary for critically assessing and producing documentaries that serve as vehicles for advocacy and social change within food studies. By the end of the course, students will make their own short documentary.
Course Objectives:
1. Analyze Documentary Techniques
a. Critically analyze documentary films about food systems, sustainability, ecology, and
social justice.
b. Identify and evaluate documentary techniques and modes of storytelling used in
conveying messages and advocating for awareness or change.
2. Cultivate Media Literacy:
a. Enhance media literacy to critically assess the credibility, bias, and intent behind food-
related documentaries.
b. Understand the role of media in shaping public perception and policy around food issues.
3. Develop a Personal Advocacy Project:
a. Learn the steps to conceive, plan, and execute a documentary film project.
b. Identify a specific food-related issue or subject of personal interest or concern.
c. Plan and execute a mini-project utilizing documentary techniques and modes of
storytelling.
MET ML 722, Studies in Food Activism will be taught this Summer 2025 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00-7:30 p.m. by José López Ganem, with a travel component to Boston, Massachusetts (from July 31 to August 2, 2025).
This class will explore academic and practical efforts on food activism and citizens’ efforts to promote social and economic justice through food practices. Either by outright challenging existing structures or supporting philanthropic schemes to mitigate externalities, the space of individual expression and group pressure in food is vast, covering the terrain from the field to the market shelf, from the raw product to the written word. Our time together will focus on exploring diverse, US-based, individual and collective forms of food activism including veganism, gleaning, farmers’ markets, organic farming, fair trade, CSAs, buying groups, school gardens, anti-GMO movements, family foundations, among others.
To test the theory and understand the daily complexities of the food activist, the course includes a 3-day trip to Boston, Massachusetts, where we will visit, engage, and evaluate a series of operations that seek to intervene in the way food is grown, transported, cooked, marketed, purchased, recycled, and beyond.
Students interested in learning more about their own activist voice or pursuing a career in the food activist, nonprofit, or philanthropy sector, will find the most value in engaging the curriculum. Moreover, this class will be relevant to anybody that considers themselves an “active” or “aware food consumer.”
In a time where political engagement reaches sectors sometimes misperceived far from The Hill, discover how the taste of your favorite vegetable, the location of a snubby supermarket, or the persistent existence of unhealthy ingredients were decided by predominantly political processes. Above all, come to understand your role as a food scholar on how to participate in its evolution.