Program Overview
Food Studies
Explore a growing field.
A harvest from Vel’s Purple Oasis, an Oberlin community partner and grassroots urban farm located in Cleveland’s University Circle.
Photo credit: Jaycie Tayerle
Critical Examination of Food and Agricultural Practices
Oberlin students can attain close to 1,000 hours of community service experience in a semester
Connect to Urban Farms
For nearly a decade, Professor Jay Fiskio and her students in American Agricultures have been studying and visiting urban farms in Cleveland.
The Mellon Foundation awarded Oberlin a $1 million grant to support food justice initiatives
Food Justice
The Bonner Center is Oberlin’s hub for connecting students and faculty to community-engaged internships, research projects, and work study. Oberlin’s existing community partners in food justice include Oberlin Community Services (OCS), the Food Shed, Cleveland Roots, Stone Soup CLE, and the Immigrant Worker Project.
Featured Courses
ENGL 101
Intro to Food Studies
This course provides the basic concepts and interdisciplinary frameworks for understanding the field of food studies. Students analyze food systems, including agricultural markets and production, farm policy, consumption, meaning, and identity. Guest speakers from throughout the college and the surrounding community help offer a range of disciplinary perspectives.
- Taught by
- Danielle Skeehan
ENVS 302
American Agricultures
This course examines agrarian thinking and food justice movements in the United States through literature, essays, film, and field trips. We learn about the political philosophy of democratic agrarianism and the contributions of Indigenous, enslaved, and immigrant peoples to American agricultural practices and foodways. Throughout the course we pay close attention to the Rust Belt as a location of contemporary work for food justice.
- Taught by
- Jay Fiskio
SOCI 387
Restaurants, Cafes, Bars
What does it mean for public life to flourish in privately owned spaces? This course explores the history, impacts, and transformations of small businesses credited with sustaining community and launching revolutions. Students explore the everyday reality this acclaim often ignores, including labor conditions, especially for women and immigrants, and the connections between the commodities sold and histories of colonialism and globalization.
- Taught by
- Greggor Mattson
CAST 416
Taste of the Nation
Do your tastes in food, art, and popular culture say something about who you are? This class draws on philosophy and critical theory in order to explore the politics of consumption. Along the way, students analyze works of art, literature, and pop culture that make connections between taste and particular constructions of nationality, sexuality, gender, race, class, and ethnicity.
- Taught by
- Carmen Merport Quiñones
Food Studies Stories
A Passion for Community Organizing
Vera Grace Menafee ’24 discovered a passion for community organizing, gardening, and environmental and racial justice through their ongoing work with Vel’s Purple Oasis, a community-based urban farm in Cleveland.
Working with Community Partners
With the help of a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, Oberlin begins a wide-ranging collaboration with Lorain County Community College to address food justice across the Great Lakes region.
Food and Heritage
At Asian Night Market, food serves not only as an opportunity to share a good meal, but as an entry point into broader discussions about culture and identity.
