Explore Italian Culture through Food!
Explore Italian Culture through Food!
The program in Food, Sustainability, & the Environment (FSE) at Umbra invites students and professors to participate in the study of food systems, sustainability and the environment. Whether enrolling in semester or summer courses, participating in the biennial Food Conference, or leading a group of students to discover the complexities of Italian food culture, the Umbra Institute engages with scholars, professors, and students seeking to develop a deeper understanding of global food systems, sustainability, and the environment.
The Program in Food, Sustainability, & Environment (FSE) offers a semester-long, interdisciplinary certificate program open to all students with an interest in food, sustainability, and the environment. It is particularly well-suited to those hoping to cultivate a career in the food or environmental industries, or seeking to continue their education at the graduate level.
This program includes a series of co- and extracurricular activities that are an integral part of the curriculum; they include guest lectures, site visits, field trips, culinary activities, research projects, and other hands-on experiences. These activities allow students to directly observe the concepts studied in the classroom and analyze issues surrounding food, sustainability and the environment in an Italian and global context from varied perspectives.
All students who successfully complete the FSE and meet the certification requirements will receive a certificate of completion from the Umbra Institute. In addition to the two certificates below, the FSE also offers a Dual Certificate for which students take the required Italian class, the 1-credit core class, and two classes from each of the two tracks.
For the Certificate in Food Studies, students would take a 4-credit
Italian class and then have the following curriculum:
Mandatory Core:
FSST 100: Experiencing Sustainable Italian Foodways (1 credit)
Three courses with FSST titles (12 credits)
Total: 17 credits
For the Certificate in Environmental Studies & Sustainability, students would take a 4 credit Italian class and then have the following curriculum:
Mandatory Core:
FSST 100: Experiencing Sustainable Italian Foodways (1 credit)
Three courses with either SUS or ENV titles (12 credits)
Total: 17 credits
While teaching is central to the Institute’s mission, research serves both didactic and professional goals. Recent faculty research has included a monograph on the food businesses of Italian emigrants in Belgium, an edited collection on representations of Italian food, a critical analysis of the meaning of heritage in food, and a handbook for Italian winemakers looking to export to the United States. Current projects include a monograph on Italian sagre, an article exploring the absence of the enologist’s laboratory in the discourse about food landscapes, and anthropological research on fisherfolk’s perceptions of fish in Lago Trasimeno. This research not only keeps the faculty actively involved with academic discussions on food, but also provides readings for courses and opportunities for students to engage in faculty projects.
The Institute also promotes student research through faculty-led independent study projects or the more intensive semester-long Scholars Program. A recent student project on the Italian aversion to taking food home from restaurants led to a three-year-long community engagement project with the City of Perugia known as RepEAT, designed to promote doggie bags in the city’s restaurants. Students have also presented their research several times at both the biennial food conference and the Association for the Study of Food & Society. Two FSE students recently won awards for their research in Perugia from the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition and the Forum on International Education.
The Institute is currently creating a long-term institutional research project in collaboration with the City of Perugia and the Region of Umbria. This five-year project will also develop an online wiki of Umbrian foods and foodways. Umbra students will contribute text, photographs, interviews, and video to the first bilingual archive of its type.
The Institute’s didactic kitchen, located in the Institute, is the ideal venue to explore food chemistry as well as to provide students with hands-on, non-credit-bearing activities that complement their classroom studies. Click here to learn more about what can be discovered through Umbra’s co- and extra-curricular cooking and tasting activities.
Welcome and Farewell Dinners.
Weekend field trip to Modena and Parma Factories;
Workshops with Local Artisans
Italian Cooking Classes in Umbra’s Didactic Kitchen;
Visits to Local Farm-to-Table and Fair Trade restaurants;
Hands-on Experience in Umbra’s Urban Garden;
Truffle hunting in the Apennine Mountains;
This unique program takes qualified students’ academic experience one step further. Not only do they participate fully in the FSE Program, which includes a rich complement of co-curricular activities, workshops and field trips, but students will also pursue an original independent research project. As always, the Scholars Program Coordinator will provide assistance and guidance in defining the research project, assigning a faculty mentor, and selecting the complimentary courses that best fit the student’s needs.
Since 2012, the Umbra Institute has hosted a biennial food conference in Perugia. Past keynotes have included Ken Albala, Massimo Montanari, Rachel Black, Kolleen Guy, Amy Trubek, Simone Cinotto, Molly Anderson, Alice Julier, Lisa Heldke, Michael Herzfeld, and John Lang.
Some of the contributions to the first conference have been published as Representing Italy Through Food (Bloomsbury, 2017), edited by Peter Naccarato, Zachary Nowak, and Elgin K. Eckert.The fifth edition of the conference will be held June 2022.
Stay tuned for the Call for Papers!
