Courses Taught

Food, Agriculture & Society (RSOC 3190)

This course is designed to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to the study of the agrifood system. The class conceptually divided into three sections:

The historical development of the agrifood system.
The large-scale and “conventional” sectors.
The small-scale and “alternative” sectors.

Students are challenged to consider the relationship between the U.S. and the global agrifood systems; the forces that affect the structure and increasing bifurcation of the agrifood system; and the ways in which they personally interact with the agrifood system and communities therein.

Sociology of Natural Resources and Environment (RSOC 5650/6650)

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This course is available to both advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Conceptually, the course focuses on the social construction of natural resource and environment problems including, but not limited to:

Discourse including framing and the role of the media.
Governance including the role of science and power.
Production and consumption including resource dependence.
Risk and disaster including the barriers and constraints to community resilience.

At the core of the course is a semester-long case study, rooted in content analysis, which provides students with an opportunity to focus on the application of course concepts, theories, and approaches to explore and to analyze a “real-world” natural resource or environmental problem.

Special Problems in Rural Sociology (RSOC 7960): Sociology of the Agri-food System

Drawing on classic and contemporary literature, this course is designed to provide a graduate level introduction to the sociology of food and agriculture. Similar to RSOC 3190, it focuses on the historical development of the U.S. agrifood system; its contemporary structure and connection to the larger global agrifood system; and the human and nonhuman actors that bring agrifood products into being, into the market, and into the hands and mouths of consumers.

Last Updated: Aug. 22, 2010