At MIT, food for thought
Beyond being a human necessity, food can serve as a symbol of social class or national identity; a consuming hobby; or even a battleground for raw politics. Last Friday at MIT, food also became a lens on history: A scholarly conference revealed rich new research on gender, migration, and ethnicity, all refracted through the study of cuisine. To see how food sheds light on social history, consider Asian immigration to the U.S.: Chinese-Americans have long been burdened with food-based stereotypes, such as the idea that dogs are standard fare in China. Yet as MIT historian Emma Teng asserted at the symposium, four Chinese-Americans who became celebrity cooks during the 20th century — Buwei Yang Chao, Joyce Chen, Cecilia Chiang, and Grace Zia Chu — all promoted Chinese cooking with a considerably more tasteful image. In their popular books and television shows, Chinese cuisine was carefully stripped of some exotic touches. “They contested the...