JINS 395 - Connectivity and the Unsustainable: A Food System in Crisis

This interdisciplinary seminar will examine the food system as it is most commonly carried out in the developed world, with particular emphasis upon the United States. Several contemporary crises have led researchers from a wide variety of academic disciplines to question, criticize and challenge our dominant systems of producing, accessing and consuming food. From the rise in chronic, debilitating diseases such as diabetes and heart disease to the dramatic surge in antibiotic resistant pathogens; from public discoveries of cruel and illegal practices widespread in industrial animal production to increasing awareness of alternative models for food production; and from wider understandings of the ways that class and race determine who lives and eats healthily to the implication of industrial agriculture’s contribution to global warming, this course will engage topics that raise heated and often bitter debate. The goal of the course is to examine the primary evidence in each case, though the disciplinary lenses of medicine, dietetics, agricultural science, animal ethology, philosophy, political science and climate science. Students will be asked to engage with what “counts” as evidence in several different fields, and to evaluate the public debates on the basis of that evidence.

Prerequisite: Junior Status
Credits: 3
NOTE:
* This course fulfills the Junior Interdisciplinary Writing-Enhanced Seminar Interconnecting Perspective of the Liberal Studies Program.
** This course counts toward the 63-credit Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) graduation requirement.
*** This is a writing-enhanced course.