Tacos, margarine, cooking, taverns and edible wild foods are the topics of the fall Shannon lecture series at Carleton University. Grub and Grog: Food and Drink in History will bring in speakers from as far away as San Francisco, Minnesota, and Victoria BC to speak on the history of food and drink.
“This is a field of research that has become important for historians, and Carleton has an unusual concentration of people working in it,“ said Rod Phillips, professor in the Department of History. “Paul Nelles teaches a course on the history of food, Matt Bellamy works and teaches on the brewing industry, while I research and teach on the history of food and drink, especially alcohol.”
They are bringing in leading figures from this growing field to speak on their research. Food and drink are infused with cultural meanings, and their history covers not only the production and consumption of foodstuffs, but also their relationships to power, gender, class and ethnicity.
The first speaker, Jeff Pilcher, from the University of Minnesota, will speak about the history of Mexican food on Friday Oct. 11, at 3 p.m. in 303 Paterson Hall. By telling the stories of the “Chili Queens” of San Antonio and the inventors of the taco shell, the lecture will show how Mexican Americans helped to make Mexican food global.
The second in the series, Charlene Elliot, from the University of Calgary, will speak on “The Great Butter Caper: On law, fakes and the biography of margarine” on Oct. 18. Ken Albala from San Francisco speaks about cooking on October 25. Julia Roberts from Waterlook describes tavern culture on Nov. 8. Nancy Turner from Victoria looks at edible wild foods used by First Nations on the Pacific coast on Nov. 15.
The Shannon Lectures in History is a series of thematically linked public lectures offered annually at Carleton and made possible through the Shannon Donation, a major anonymous gift from a friend of the Department of History. In recent years, renowned Canadian and international scholars have explored the history of emotions or how storytelling and history intersect.
Fall 2013 Lecture Schedule
All lectures will take place in the Humanities Lecture Theatre, 303 Paterson Hall, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. followed by a reception in the Department of History Lobby, fourth floor Paterson Hall.
October 11, 2013 Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food Jeffrey Pilcher, Department of History, University of Minnesota.
People often ask: “What is authentic Mexican food?” The burritos and taco shells that many people think of as Mexican were actually created in the United States, while Americanized foods have recently been carried around the world in tin cans and tourist restaurants. By telling the stories of the “Chili Queens” of San Antonio and the inventors of the taco shell, the lecture will show how Mexican Americans helped to make Mexican food global. This talk will examine the differing historical perceptions of Mexican food, as well as the contemporary struggle between globalization and national sovereignty represented by the clash of fast food and Mexican regional cuisines.
October 18, 2013 Canada’s Great Butter Caper: On law, fakes and the biography of margarine. Charlene Elliott, Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary.
October 25, 2013 Adventures in Cooking from the Past. Ken Albala, Department of History, University of the Pacific.
November 8, 2013 The Tavern Company: Food, Drink, and the Bonds of Sociability in a Colonial Society. Julia Roberts, Department of History, University of Waterloo.
November 15, 2013 Only in Canada: History, Ecology and Culture of Edible Wild Plants of First Peoples in Western Canada. Nancy Turner, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria.
For further information please contact the Department of History at (613) 520-2828, by email to history@carleton.ca or visit our website at www.carleton.ca/history.
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Steven Reid
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