Culinary History in an Atlantic Context ‘from the Bottom Up’
Presented by
Anthony Buccini

In this talk we focus initially on two iconic regional dishes from the American South, jambalaya and Hopping John (and its Haitian and Louisianan cousins congri), which are related directly only through their inclusion of rice as a core ingredient and the etymologies of their names, and use them as exemplars of instances of the importation of culinary aesthetics from the ‘Old World’ by poor whites and enslaved blacks. In addition to offering new etymologies for these dishes’ names which are based on both sound linguistic arguments and thorough analysis of the relevant culinary history, we also examine the development of these dishes in their broader Atlantic socio-historical context.

Anthony F. Buccini received his undergraduate education at Columbia University in the City of New York (B.A.) and his graduate education at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (Ph.D.); he also studied and later conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He has published and taught extensively in his primary fields of historical linguistics, dialectology and sociolinguistics. In food studies, Dr. Buccini has long been a regular contributor to the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery and has published widely in the field, especially on Mediterranean foodways. In 2005 he was awarded the Sophie Coe Prize in Food History for his essay “Western Mediterranean Vegetable Stews and the Integration of Culinary Exotica” and his current research includes work on a monograph, From Green to Gold, on the history of Mediterranean foodways with particular reference to the history of olive oil (to appear, Columbia University Press).

(West of Halsted Street, North of Chicago Avenue)
Free Parking in lot across the street
Cost: $3,
Free to Kendall students and faculty with ID.

This program is hosted by the Chicago Foodways Roundtable. To reserve, please e-mail: culinaryhistorians@gmail.com.