Food Literacy Project Speaker Series: Dr. Claire Bunschoten on Vanilla and How it Shapes American Life
Wednesday, November 20th  
4:30-5:30pm 
Location: Smith Campus Center, 2nd Floor, Mt. Auburn Room
This event is open to all HUID holders. 

The word vanilla might evoke thoughts of ice cream flavors, or a fragrant baking ingredient, but the word can also be used to describe something ordinary, boring. These varying uses and meanings are at the center of guest presenter, Dr. R. Claire Bunschoten’s research. 

Dr. Bunschoten is the Abbott Lowell Cummings Postdoctoral Fellow in American Material Culture at Boston University’s American and New England Studies Program. Her manuscript project “examines the politics and social worlds of vanilla—as an ingredient, a flavor, a fragrance, and a euphemism for race—in the context of everyday life in the United States. Cumulatively it explores how vanilla contains multitudes yet communicates the ordinary alongside normative ideological positions as they are tied to class status, ethnicity, gender, and race in the United States.”
Registration is encouraged, as seating is limited. Sign up here.