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Food Studies Program

Food Studies Program

The Business of Food 

Join the Food Studies Program for a few upcoming sessions as they tap into the business of food. Hear from industry leaders from across the U.S. share their perspectives on existing opportunities and challenges surrounding food entrepreneurship.

Upcoming Events


Past Events

  • Mar 24
    Activist Leah Penniman Discusses Her Book "Farming While Black"
    MaituFoods, Grow Where You Are, Slow Food Spelman College, the Spelman Food Studies Program and Slow Food Atlanta invite you to a join them for a gathering with author Leah Penniman, co-founder, co-director and program manager of Soul Fire Farm, in Grafton, New York.
  • Mar 28
    Black Feminism(s) and Food
    Join the Spelman College community for a discussion with activists, growers, and writers as they discuss how Black feminism(s) and womanhood have shaped their understandings of justice, liberation, wellness, and food sustainability.
  • Mar 30
    Food Justice Symposium
    The Food Studies Program is hosting an exciting conversation with African American women food scholars, Dr. Monica White, LaDonna Redmond and Alison Brown, C'2007.

Minor Requirements    Meet Our Food Studies Scholars 


The Food Studies program positions food at the center of academic inquiry, calling attention to the multifaceted ways food, and discourses surrounding it, influence us as not only as biological beings, but social and cultural actors as well. 

Students, Don't Miss These Food Studies Opportunities

Real-World Skills With Global Impact

Agricultural Class Archives

An agricultural class of Spelman women working in the Victory Garden in the early part of the 20th century (circa 1904-1920). Courtesy of the Spelman College Archives.

The food studies minor at Spelman College requires students to engage multiple theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, transcending individual disciplinary constraints in order to explore food in innovative ways. Food as the object of scholarly attention is not new. Many features of food are commonly explored across academic disciplines, from chemistry, biology and environmental sciences to economics, history, humanities and the social sciences.

Lasting Impact and Rigorous Thought

The minor seeks to guide students in questioning the very foundations of what we consider “food” to be, challenging them to consider how food - its naming, production, distribution, and consumption - is historically contingent and, as critical food studies researchers note, is simultaneously a site of pleasure and power dynamics. Upon completion of the minor, students will be able to do the following:
  • Develop a global and comparative perspective about food’s cultural, social, and biological significance

  • Develop an intersectional framework from which to understand gendered experiences of food production, distribution, and consumption

  • Apply theoretical approaches to studying food to real world problems
  • Understand that food lies at the nexus of multiple dimensions—environmental, political, biological, cultural, etc. — and approaches to addressing food-related problems must be multifaceted; 

  • Examine the ways food is centered in political discourses in both domestic and global spheres (e.g., social welfare policies, conglomeration of food corporation, food system, globalization, constructions of world hunger)

Food Studies in Action