Krishnendu Ray delivered a lecture on ‘Aftertaste of Empire: Cultural Imperialism and Asian Culinary Nationalisms’. It was chaired by Awadhendra Sharan.
ZOOM ID: 89183068762 PASSCODE: csdsdelhi
Oscar Wilde: “In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention … The Japanese people are, as I have said, simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art”.
Madhur Jaffrey once retorted to me: “Why do Americans love the food of the people they have gone to war with?”
There is a rich and varied literature on how the food system is shaped by capitalism and the Cold War. Yet, discussions of good taste are unaccounted for with any geopolitical insight, and much of the literature on soft power and gastrodiplomacy remains poorly theorized. Is it because the aesthetic form of food has no relationship to the interstate system, unlike literature or movies or music? This lecture aims to get past those constructions and postulate a reason why and how Americans came to love the food of the people they have gone to war with.
Krishnendu Ray is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU. He is the author of The Migrant’s Table (2004) and The Ethnic Restaurateur (2016) and the co-editor of Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (2012) and Practicing Food Studies (2024).
Awadhendra Sharan is Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Monday, 25 August 2025, 4 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom https://bit.ly/47y6MX5
