So You Wanna Run Away to Italy and Get a Gastronomic Degree

Don't we all. But this is a uniquely romantic opportunity: spend a year in Parma, one of Italy's food hubs, studying sustainable agriculture at a university run by the Slow Food organization, with field trips to France, Greece and Spain, then produce a final project about it. This Bostonist smells a book deal.

At Slow Food's University of Gastronomic Sciences in central Italy, students can study food from all angles: anthropological, ethical, economical, historical. Like Le Cordon Bleu, the University offers culture-hungry (and just plain hungry) Americans a foreign altar at which to worship food and European ways of being, but without requiring one to touch fish guts or even learn the language (all courses are taught in English). The school's varied degree programs all appear to be exercises in Advanced Foodie-ism, a recreational pursuit that's becoming more and more serious in this country. And the professional bent of the classes (they're designed to train you as a food communication expert, presumably able to distinguish real balsamic vinegar from its imitators and market your client's sustainable winery with dash and panache) suggests that one might actually be able to make a career out of Advanced Foodie-ism without attending culinary school.

Sound like a fantasy? It very well may be, and one that costs 16,000 Euro, with few scholarships available and limited class spaces. But if you're still interested in potentially living out the dream of many Americans (who are flocking to culinary schools despite the debt, considering grad school more than ever before, and increasingly obsessed with sustainable agriculture), we recommend that you attend the University's free info session this week at the Nonprofit Center. (Applications are due in December; classes begin next March.) Here's the info:

Date: April 29, 2009 (Tonight!)
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Place: The NonProfit Center
Address: 89 South Street (one block west of South Station)
Cost: No charge

If you plan to attend, you should RSVP to David Santo at d.szanto@unisg.it.

If you can't make the session, you can still view program information here.

Photo courtesy of the University of Gastronomic Sciences.