Harold B. Lee Library

Explorations at the Table: Food, the Familiar, and the Exotic

Jill Rudy, Assistant Professor/English Department

• Time: 3:00 PM
• Date: Thursday, November 11, 2004
• Place: DeLamar Jensen Lecture Room, 1130 HBLL

About the Event

What will be on your Thanksgiving table? Who will gather around the table for the Thanksgiving feast? Has a key ingredient of your Thanksgiving dinner ever been unavailable? How did you respond to that lack? Recurring images associated with American Thanksgiving suggest the problems and possibilities of culinary and cultural exchange. Folklorist and foodways scholar Michael Owen Jones asserts, “Eating is a physiological and an intellectual experience, unique in the range and intensity of effect; it is ongoing, at once familiar and yet also novel.” Seeking the novel eating experience informs folklorist Lucy M. Long’s definition of culinary tourism as “the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an Other.” While intentionally eating unfamiliar, or exotic, food is a key to the experience of culinary tourism, extended stay eaters, such as Mormon missionaries, often unintentionally encounter exotic foods and unfamiliar eating habits. Their response may be to intentionally seek out familiar eating experiences, such as creating a Thanksgiving feast in Guatemala, Russia, or the Philippines. In this lecture, we will explore ways that food becomes a powerful symbol that embodies continuity and change.

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