Description:

What happens to indigenous food cultures during times of ongoing colonial settlement? This presentation theorizes the material and affective registers of taste qualities - sweet, cold, sour, and tepid - as indexes of changing political power within the Hawaiian Kingdom throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and argues that consideration of the palate is central to understanding what and how we eat in America today.

Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart is a postdoctoral fellow in indigenous studies. Her research is concerned with how food and print media frames territorial occupation in 19th century settler colonial contexts. Her dissertation research uses frozen water, or ice, to explore the politics of ingestion, representation, and materiality in settler colonial Hawai’i.

This is part of the Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium. Find it on Facebook.