Admission requirements
This course is only available for students in the BA International Studies programme.
The number of participants is limited to 24.
Please note that passing a Thematic Seminar (10 EC) in the second year, second semester, is an entry requirement for starting your thesis in academic year 2024-2025. You need to have passed a minimum of 100 EC of year 1 and 2 of the International Studies programme as well in order to start your thesis.
Description
This course explores the political ecology of food from seed to plate, looking at the connections between the well-being of land-based resources and human and non-human living beings. As a source of nourishment, food mediates our metabolic relation with the natural world, within ecologically and culturally defined contexts. At the same time, food is a social and cultural artifact, a function of technological existence, a product and conduit of economic and political power, and access to food intersects with existing structures of social inequality.
The course explores these issues through two broad and in many ways opposing valuations of food production and consumption: food as a commodity vs. food as life. These are idealized framings, but they serve as useful heuristics with which to understand both how our modern food system came to be, and the diverse experiences and practices of food ways in contemporary society. First, the course examines how our modern, commodity-centric food system came to be, and how this has become a driver of ecological crisis. Second, it looks at the multiple meanings food has for people around the world, and the ways they have organized collectively to advance more just, equitable, and regenerative food systems – where food isn’t primarily a commodity, but rather a source of socio-ecological reproduction, as well as a basic human right.
This course includes a Virtual Cooperation component: during the last 4 weeks of classes students will collaborate with a group of fellow students from Green River College (USA) and conduct a comparative study of foodscapes in the Netherlands and in the United States. The Virtual Cooperation component will provide students with the opportunity to participate in synchronous seminars co-taught with lecturers at the partner institution, and collaborate with fellow US students at a joint assignment which can take the form of a food podcast, interactive commodity chain analysis, experimental video, photography, or other formats.
Course objectives
The Thematic Seminars for International Studies are designed to teach students how to deal with state-of-the-art literature and research questions. They are chosen to enhance the students’ learning experience by building on the multidisciplinary perspectives they have developed so far, and to introduce them to the art of academic research. They are characterised by an international or comparative approach.
Academic skills that are trained include:
Oral and written presentation skills:
1. To explain clear and substantiated research results.
2. To provide an answer to questions concerning (a subject) in the field covered by the course:
in the form of a clear and well-structured oral presentation;
in agreement with the appropriate disciplinary criteria;
using up-to-date presentation techniques;
using relevant illustration or multimedia techniques;
aimed at a specific audience.
3. To actively participate in a discussion
Collaboration skills:
1. To provide and receive constructive criticism, and incorporate justified criticism by revising one’s own position.
2. To adhere to agreed schedules and priorities.
Basic research skills, including heuristic skills:
1. To collect and select academic literature using traditional and digital methods and techniques.
2. To analyse and assess this literature with regard to quality and reliability.
3. To formulate on this basis a sound research question.
4. To design under supervision a research plan of limited scope, and implement it using the methods and techniques that are appropriate within the discipline involved.
5. To formulate a substantiated conclusion.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminars
Seminars are held every week, with the exception of the Midterm Exam week. This includes supervised research.
Assessment method
Assessment and Weighing
| Partial grade | Weighing |
|---|---|
| In-class assignments | 15% |
| Virtual Cooperation Project | 20% |
| Research proposal | 15% |
| Final Research Essay - 5,000 words (between 4,500 and 5,500) | 50% |
End Grade
To successfully complete the course, please take note that the End Grade of the course is established by determining the weighted average of all assessment components.
Resit
Students who score an overall insufficient grade for the course, are allowed resubmit a reworked version of the Final Essay. The deadline for resubmission is 10 working days after receiving the grade for the Final Research Essay and subsequent feedback.
In case of resubmission of the Final Research Essay the final grade for the Essay will be lowered as a consequence of the longer process of completion.
Students who fail to hand in their final essay on or before the original deadline, but still within 5 working days of that deadline, will receive a grade and feedback on their essay. This will be considered a first submission of the final essay, however, the grade will be lowered as a consequence of the longer process of completion.
Students who fail to hand in their final essay on or before the original deadline, and also fail to hand in their essay within 5 working days of that deadline, get 10 working days, counting from the original deadline, to hand in the first version of their final essay. However, this first version counts as a resubmitted essay with consequential lowering of the grade, and there will be no option of handing in a reworked version based on feedback from the lecturer.
Retaking a passing grade
Retaking a passing grade is not possible for this course.
Please consult the Course and Examination Regulations 2023 – 2024.
Exam review and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.
Reading list
To be announced.
Additionally, the students will work through:
W.C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research, fourth edition, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2016, or;
W.C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research, third edition, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Registration
Registration occurs via survey only. Registration opens 15 December 2023:
- On 15 December 2023 you will receive a message with a link to the survey.
- Indicate there which are your 5 preferred Thematic Seminars, in order of preference.
- Based on preferences indicated by 8 January 2024 the course Coordinator will assign you to one specific Thematic Seminar by 22 January 2024.
- Students will then be enrolled for the specific groups by the Administration Office.
Students cannot register in uSis for the Thematic Seminar courses, or be allowed into a Thematic Seminar course in any other way.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Student Affairs Office for BA International Studies
Remarks
The deadline for submission of the Final Essay is Friday 7 June 2024.