SUMMER COURSE: UVM summer course Milk to Maple still has seats

FS 395: Vermont’s Rural Food System: From Milk to Maple

In this course, students will be introduced to the complex interdependence of all aspects of the contemporary food system, with a focus on Vermont, a small rural agricultural state. The course adopts a systems analysis for understanding the history, present and future of Vermont’s working landscape. The course will combine a broad exploration of important foods to the region from the past (maple syrup) and the present (diversified vegetables) with a more intensive case study of dairy farming and dairy products. Our case study of dairy will include visiting a farmstead cheese maker, touring a large milk processing plant, visiting dairy farm and attending a cheese tasting. Our broader exploration will include visiting a sugar shack, exploring value added maple products, visiting farms that rely on Community supported Agriculture, a food venture center and more.

This intensive trip (travel dates June 24, 2013 – July 2, 2013) to Vermont will include seminars with University of Vermont faculty, daily student led discussions, interactions with producers and field trips. Course meets online June 17 – 21, 2013 and July 3 – 12, 2013.

Instructor Biographies:

Teresa Mares, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and is affiliated faculty with the M.S. Program in Food Systems at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on the intersection of food and migration studies, and she is particularly interested in the ways that the diets and foodways of Latino/a immigrants change as a result of migration. She has recently published articles in the following academic journals: Latino Studies, Agriculture and Human Values, Environment and Society: Advances in Research; and the following volumes: Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability (Alkon and Agyeman, eds), and Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (Hou, ed). She is currently developing a new ethnographic research project examining citizenship and food work in Vermont.

tmares@uvm.edu

Karen Nordstrom, MAE is a Doctoral Candidate in the Rubenstein School of Environment & Natural Resources at the University of Vermont.  Her research project focuses on Education for Sustainability (EfS), with an emphasis on sustainable food systems. This study involves an evaluation of the environmentally-themed GreenHouse Residential Learning Community program, which provides programming for over 200 students from a range of majors, and an analysis of the development of three immersion courses focused on food systems: : “Café (en) Tacuba: Ecologies and Livelihoods in a Shade Coffee Landscape of El Salvador,” a study abroad course focusing on the coffee value chain; and two exchange courses organized jointly by UVM and NYU, “Vermont’s Rural Food System: From Milk to Maple” and “Exploring New York City’s Urban Food System.”  knordstr@uvm.edu