Experts on the history, culture and science of food will deliver a series of public talks this semester as part of the Indiana University Food Institute’s fall lecture series.
The lectures, which are free and open to the public, take place every other Thursday at the IU Food Institute building at 405/407 N. Park St., Bloomington. The next speaker in the series is Simone Cinotto of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont, Italy, who is scheduled from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Sept. 21. The other speakers will be scheduled from 5 to 6 p.m.
Cinotto is a historian of Italian food and immigration in the United States and the author of “The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City” and “Soft Soil, Black Grapes: The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California.” He has also held visiting professorships at New York University and the University of London. His lecture is titled “Italian Imagination and Practice of Food and Place.”
Additional speakers are:
- Oct. 5: Matt Bochman, assistant professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. An expert in the use of yeast in cancer research, Bochman is also the founder of Wild Pitch Yeast, a company that extracts local yeast from the environment for use in craft beer brewing. His lecture will focus on “Fermentation: Beer, Mead and Spirits.”
- Oct. 19: Vivian Halloran, associate professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Comparative Literature. Halloran’s research focuses on the intersection of art, history and literature; autobiography, poetry and the novel; and scientific discourse, medicine and popular literature. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript about the culinary memories of immigrants to the U.S. Her lecture will focus on “Immigrant Food Memoirists.”
- Nov. 2: James Farmer, assistant professor in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington. Farmer’s research interests include the market for organic crops, the growth of specialty foods and barriers to integrating local food systems into communities. He is also a team leader on a project funded by the IU Sustainability Innovation Fund to establish a campus farm at the Hinkle-Garton Farmstead. His lecture will focus on “Grower Research and the IU Campus Farm.”
- Nov. 16: Olga Kalentzidou, director of undergraduate studies in the IU School of Global and International Studies. Kalentzidou studies food practices among Black Sea immigrants in Northern Greece, including the impact of globalization on local food memory and narratives. Her lecture will focus on “Food Security Through Service Learning.”
- Nov. 30: Yong-Yeol Ahn, assistant professor in the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, or SICE. A member of the SICE Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Ahn studies computational models of complex systems, such as biological and social networks, and has published on the relationships between “flavor networks” in food. His lecture will focus on “Food Pairing and Flavor Networks.”
- Dec. 14: Andrea Wiley, professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Anthropology. Wiley studies the interaction between culture and biology, including how these concepts affect health, disease, demography, diet and nutrition. She is currently conducting a biocultural analysis of gluten intolerance. Her lecture will focus on “Human Diet and Nutrition.”
The mission of the IU Food Institute, which is supported by the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences, is the promotion of innovative research, education and public outreach on multidisciplinary approaches to food and foodways, which are the cultural, social and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. The institute focuses on faculty research and graduate training as well as the development of undergraduate education and learning opportunities through the IU Food Project. It is also dedicated to addressing the pressing human and environmental challenges of providing both sustaining and sustainable food for a changing planet.
For more information, contact Julie Wasserman at jkwasser@indiana.edu or subscribe to the institute’s weekly newsletter.
