Famines and Severe Food Insecurity (DHP-D242M)

Spring 2026 · DHP D242M · Tufts University · 1.5 credits · Undergraduate

For people who live in a country with abundant resources, famine may seem like a surreal topic in distant lands. For others, it is all too real. These terrible episodes in human history can have a lasting effect on the people who experience them, changing the norms of society, relationships between nations and between a people and its government. Some 20 years ago, we thought we had seen the last famine. Sadly, though we now have the technical capacity and resources to prevent famines and severe food insecurity, these are becoming increasingly common. There are many different types of catastrophes in the world, but famine is somehow unique – it involves not an isolated group of individuals within a society, but in one way or another, everyone in that society as a large part of the population struggles day to day just to stay alive, sometimes across multiple years, and many are not successful. This class will examine famines not as events, but processes and systems manipulated by humans, though often aggravated by natural hazards, market failures, epidemics and other factors. We will look at these systems from the highest, conceptual, theoretical levels down to the experiences of individuals simply trying to get enough food to keep their families and themselves alive.

Course codes: DHP-D242M

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