Food Studies Initiative

About the Food Studies Initiative

Funded by a Strategic Initiatives Grant, the USD Food Studies Initiative (FSI) seeks to engage students, faculty and staff on urgent questions concerning food ethics and to spark an ethical and justice-oriented approach to food on campus.

Through our collaboration and outreach efforts, we aim to increase socially-engaged food scholarship at USD, build a new minor, and align USD's food-related policies on campus with USD's emphasis on care for our common home and social justice.

Areas of special interest that have already been identified include utilizing food as a vehicle to analyze and respond to racism, especially anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism; colonialism; food sovereignty; climate change; violence to animals; and the ways in which all these issues often intersect in the question of food justice.

Ultimately, we want to shape the USD campus into a model of how universities can leverage food scholarship and food services to build community on and off campus and establish more engaged and ethical foodways.

At the core of FSI's initial work will be identifying faculty, staff and students interested in serving on an advisory board that will guide later stages of the FSI. The interests of the USD community will shape the efforts of the FSI, and we welcome community members with diverse approaches to food and social justice.