Curriculum

Identities and food heritage
[Instructor: Carmen Soares]

Study of food and food practices as products and producers of cultural identities. Main issues: the heritage dimension of food and contexts of production and consumption; food choices and experiences conditioned by recognized heritage, traditional, healthy, affective, honorific, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, social, political, economic, and ethnic values; national, regional and local cuisines; UNESCO's food heritage.

Sources for the history of food
[Instructors: Irene Vaquinhas, Paulo Pereira]

-Study of the various historical sources for the knowledge of food issues: handwritten and printed sources (from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era), municipal postures, assembly minutes, cookbooks, regulations and legislation, posters, statistics, official reports and surveys, various judicial documentation, especially the Court of Commerce’s, periodic press, literary texts, correspondence and memoirs, civility codes and domestic economics manuals, iconographic fonts, among other documents. Main themes addressed: food as an exposer of behaviours and social differences; fighting food fraud; the defence of public health; food under the gaze of justice; food inspections; sociability and gastronomy: food in private (home) and public spaces (cafes, restaurants).-

Food studies I
[Instructors: Claudete Moreira, José Manuel Sobral]

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Dietary literature and gastronomy
[Instructors: Carmen Soares, Ana Maria Proserpio]

Study of how dietary discourses on healthy living have conditioned the gastronomic options from antiquity to the present day, profoundly influencing behavioural codes and food heritage. This approach allows us to understand the determining role played by health and pleasure concerns in the choices and eating habits of consumers in Portugal and other countries.

The sacred in food: myths, rituals, and symbols
[Instructors: Paula Barata Dias]

Study on how different religions integrate food in their discourses and present their own perspective on food, this being a fundamental knowledge to the understanding of current food practices, in a global world marked by inter- and multicultural dialogue. A special attention will be paid to issues of food ethics and sustainability, and its effects on the construction of discourses on what to eat.

Food studies II
[Instructors: Liliana Letra, Ricardo Bonacho]

Study of approaches that the scientific areas of medicine and communication make of Food. The following are analysed: the effects of hypercaloric diets, physical inactivity and environmental factors on the development of various diseases; the problem of the globalization of food production and its consumption and the subordination of regional food production, habits and culture, traditional food; traditional and modern food; the Mediterranean diet as a healthy dietary model; the influence of communication on representations of food in the public space (written, radio and television press; the internet; product labelling).

Orientation seminar

Qualifying test

Thesis orientation seminar

Thesis Seminars