Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire in Asia and the Pacific

Pomona College hosts a talk examining the interplay between imperial power and aspiring nationhood in Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, and China.

Cuisine and Empire in Asia and the Pacific

In teh years between 1778 when Captain Cook landed in Hawaii and 1898 when the United States acquired the Philippines, control of the Pacific passed from the Spanish to the Anglos. This talk examines the complex and diverse interplay between imperial power and aspiring nationhood in Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, and China.

Rachel Laudan received a Ph. D. in History and Philosophy of Science from University College London in 1974.  She taught at Carnegie-Mellon, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech and the University of Hawaii, the University of Melbourne, the Davis Center, Princeton, MIT, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.  She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, University of Texas, Austin.  Professor Laudan is the prize-winning author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage and a coeditor of the Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Her recent book, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History was published in November 2013.

Sponsored by the Pacific Basin Institute, the Department of History, and the Asian Studies Program at Pomona College