The Guardian

Pollenzo, Northern Italy:

Is food really an academic subject? At least Europe’s first private university established in Italy claims to be so

In the tiny village of Pollenzo, northern Italy, woodlands and cornfields part to reveal the turrets of a vast 19th-century neo-Gothic quad. A few hours away, near Parma — home of the ham — sits a wedding-cake palace painted yellow. Soon, the corridors of both will fill with the wafting vapours of rich food. These buildings are home to a new twist in the craze for vocational degree courses: Europe’s first private, international university of food — Italy’s University of Gastronomic Science. Originally it was conceived as an “academy of taste”.

The university is the brainchild of the Italian founders of the Slow Food movement. Its aim is to elevate food to an academic discipline. The courses are unique in two respects: they feature not only theory and technique, but also “sensory evaluation”, that is, how to taste and appreciate food. Students are also taken out into the field for concentrated teaching with local producers — not just in Italy, but to India, Chile, Mexico and beyond.

Around 60 students a year, undergraduate and postgraduate, will take papers such as food semiotics, the history and anthropology of food, gastronomic journalism, the “sociology of consumption”, ecology and the agricultural landscape. Culinary techniques and artisan food-making will carry as much weight as “the history of food in literature” — a rich field given the difficulty many of history’s finest writers faced in openly discussing sex, and the apt metaphors they found in the larder.

There are a number of food studies modules creeping into universities all over the world. The University of Adelaide has a large gastronomy programme and anthropologists in Britain — notably at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in London — have made an impact on the understanding of food in different cultures. But the historian Simon Schama laments that food historians tend still to be seen as “a bunch of people debating the flavour of risotto, sitting around drinking too much white wine”. He senses a puritanical suspicion inside academia towards food, even though the anthropology of food began with Herodotus and eating habits permeate the study of any culture.

Schama says: “Food is thought of as a gloppy, mushy, colour-magazine subject, not really a PhD topic. But if you think about the economics of particular commodities, there is no reason why it should not be studied. Mark Kurlansky’s book, ‘Cod’, covered war, the economy and the feeding of masses of people. It takes a lot to rule food out of the historical imagination. As soon as history becomes about more than simply battles and the lines of abstract states, (food) returns.’’

Massimo Montanari, a professor of medieval history at the university of Bologna, launched the first Italian Master’s course in food history in 2001. At the University of Gastronomic Science he will teach the history of food in terms of society, politics, economics and religion.

“The aim is to make students aware that food is not a little thing in life, it’s the central stuff of life, a starting point for understanding all aspects of the world,” Montanari says. “Food is a great ‘key’ for entering anywhere. It is evidently inter-disciplinary — linking history, geography, anthropology, medicine, arts, science and economics — so it is possible to produce students that will go on to very different jobs in many crucial sectors.”

Darra Goldstein, professor of Russian at Williams College, Massachusetts, founded her own journal, Gastronomica, after she found her work in food studies, particularly food in Russian literature by writers such as Chekhov, was being published in academic journals that weren’t reaching a wider audience. “It’s fantastic that the University of Gastronomic Science is opening up since it is a university devoted entirely to the story of gastronomy in all its permutations. But there is still the risk that it will be marginalised as something only people interested in food will want to do,” she says.Goldstein also sees some snobbishness in academia, where food — as something easy to talk about, and which we all partake of — becomes suspect as a subject for serious study. For her, food is “a wonderful way to get inside a culture, in terms of religious practises, social mores, etiquette, the treatment of outsiders and ethnic and national identity”.The merging of the academic study of food and the practicalities of making a soufflé is actually at the heart of the development of food studies in Britain. There are several projects in development to unite industry training with high-quality, student-run restaurants and food history.

University features

• The University’s classrooms and offices are located at the Agenzia di Pollenzo, a neo-gothic palace built in 1833.

• The building is a large “quadrangle” complex, an architectural style based on the Medieval curtis. In 1842, King Carlo Alberto founded the first Agricultural Association here.

• The Agenzia di Pollenzo, an experimental research center at the time, opened its doors to the public during the General Meeting of the Agricultural Association which was held in October 1843.

• The complex was aquired by the “Agenzia di Pollenzo SpA” in 1999 prior to being restored. It will be reopened in the spring this year as a centre for many diverse food related activities. The complex will play host to the University, a four star hotel, a prestigious restaurant and a wine bank, all set within extensive grounds of fields and woods.