This interdisciplinary conference focuses on the transatlantic dynamics of food and power in the long 18th century. Historians, historical geographers, and literary scholars will assess the significant role of food in shaping interpersonal and geopolitical relations during this period, focusing in particular on the perceived and real impact of scarcity and social unrest.

Conference Schedule

FRIDAY, OCT. 12

9 a.m. - Registration & Coffee

9:30 a.m. - Welcome: Steve Hindle (The Huntington)

Opening Remarks: Jennifer Anderson (Stony Brook University)
Anya Zilberstein (Concordia University)

10 a.m. - Session 1: The Politics of Food
Moderator: Anya Zilberstein

Michael LaCombe (Adelphi University)
And for you, sir? Roast venison? Or sod bread made up round [like] a tennis ball?: Serving Out Status in Early English Travel Accounts

Rebecca Earle (University of Warwick)
Potatoes, Political Economy, and Population in the Eighteenth Century

Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University)
Cowper's Swelling Gourd: Politics and the Periodicity of Cultivation

12:30 p.m. - Lunch

1:30 p.m. - Session 2: Provisioning Empire
Moderator: Jennifer Anderson

Bertie Mandelblatt (John Carter Brown Library)
Ce pain est de telle substance que bien facillement nos François sy accoustument: Missionaries, Hunger and Plenty in the early Franco-Caribbean

Shauna Sweeney (Omohundro Institute)
Feeding Empire, Forging Freedom: Jamaican Market Women and the Political Economy of Slavery

Suzanne Schwarz (University of Worcester)
Feeding Freetown: Sources of Supply in an Early African Colony, c. 1790-1815

SATURDAY, OCT. 13

9:30 a.m. - Registration & Coffee

10 a.m. - Session 3: Managing Food Supplies
Moderator: Anya Zilberstein

Nicholas Crawford (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse)
The Physical Force of the Plantation: Slave Provisioning and the Politics of Population in the British Caribbean Colonies

Carla Cevasco
Sophisticated Food: Counterfeit Comestibles in Early North America

Emma Hart (University of St. Andrews)
Flies, Filth, and Forestalling: Entrepreneurs versus the Good of the Whole in British North Americas Provisioning Markets

12:30 p.m. - Lunch

1:30 p.m. - Session 4: Changing Appetites: Cultural Meanings of Food
Moderator: Jennifer Anderson

Julie Kim (Fordham University)
Subsistence in Carib Lands

Kristen Block (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Unwholesome Appetites: Edibility and Nourishment in the 17th- to 18th-century Caribbean

Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University)
Why Drink Water?: Dietetics and British Imperialism

4:30 p.m. - Concluding Remarks: Anya Zilberstein and Jennifer Anderson

Funding provided by The Huntington’s William French Smith Endowment and The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute