Boston Flora

Tag: Boston University

  • Tuesday, April 28, 6:00 pm Eastern – Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health & Sustainable Food Systems, Online

    Join Shailesh Shukla and Priscilla Settee to discuss their book: Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health and Sustainable Food Systems

    Community-based case studies guide readers to understand the emergence, potential application, and renewal of Indigenous food systems and planetary health innovations and their role in supporting the well-being of their communities and lands and advancing the global vision of sustainable futures through interdisciplinary perspectives.

    Shailesh Shukla is a Chair and an Associate Professor at the Department of Indigenous Studies, University of Winnipeg. His teaching and research interests include exploring and promoting Indigenous perspectives and knowledge systems to improve food security, sovereignty, well-being, and planetary health in Canada and globally.

    Priscilla Settee is a member of Cumberland House Swampy Cree First Nations and Professor Emerita in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She is recognized nationally and internationally as an award-winning professor, writer, and global activist.

    As this is a virtual event, on April 28 at 6 pm Eastern, we will not be selling copies of the book, but you can purchase it though the publisher’s website. The sponsoring organization is Boston University Food Studies, and the talk is part of the 2026 Spring Jacques Pépin Lecture Series. Free. Register through Eventbrite HERE

  • Thursday, April 16, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking

    Join Chef Genevieve Meli as she discusses her book, Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking

    Chef Genevieve Meli is an associate professor of Baking and Pastry Arts at CIA. Among the courses she teaches are Individual and Production Pastries, Baking and Pastry Skill Development, and Applied Baking and Pastry Production. She was the youngest-ever chef to earn the Certified Master Baker (CMB) designation and is also a Certified Higher Education Professional (CHEP). Meli is the author of two cookbooks: Baking an Impact: Small Changes for More Sustainable Baking and Sweet Nature. Outside of the classroom, she volunteers with the Stormville Fire Company Auxiliary and enjoys gardening at her 1800s farmhouse, where she and her husband are raising their son Leonardo.

    The title is Chef Meli’s second work, and the first book to be published by CIA Press, the college’s own publishing imprint. The book showcases an incredible array of mouthwatering desserts, savory baked goods, and more, with an eye toward reducing food waste; utilizing alternative ingredients, grains, and pantry staples; and seasonality in the baking and pastry realm. Baking an Impact is available now at all CIA locations and Amazon. It’s an ideal gift for the sustainably minded baker on your list or for anyone looking to level up their baking skills.

    “People don’t often consider sustainability when it comes to baking, in part, because the staples in many of our favorite baked goods—dairy, eggs, and refined flours—are inherently not sustainable because of sourcing and heavy processing,” said Meli. “My purpose behind Baking an Impact is to show how the smallest of changes can make a larger impact than you might expect,” according to Chef Meli.

    Baking an Impact includes both sweet and savory recipes. Some of Chef Meli’s favorite recipes from the book are Coffee Coffee Cake, Wildflower Lollipops, Koginut Squash Gourds, and Blue Spirulina Oat Mint Truffles.

    This free lecture is sponsored by Boston University’s Food Studies Programs and takes place April 16 at 6 pm at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 124, Brookline, Massachusetts. Register at Eventbrite.

  • Monday, February 23, 6:00 pm – Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer Through Technology, Taste and Empire

    Join Malcom Purrinton on February 23 as he discusses his book, Globalization in a Glass:The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire.

    Malcolm F. Purinton is a Food and World historian whose work focuses primarily on the sociocultural relationships of empire, trade, and technology in the history of beer and brewing. His first book Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste, and Empire (Bloomsbury Academic Press, Food History Series, 2023) examines the development and spread of this light golden lager beer and how it became the only truly global style of beer.

    He is also the author of a chapter on the history of European beer in nineteenth century South Africa in “Alcohol Flows Across Cultures: Drinking Cultures in Transnational and Comparative Perspective” (Routledge) and has a regular column on the Boston beer scene with the northeast beer periodical, Yankee Brew News.

    In highlighting the evolution of consumer tastes through changing hierarchical relationships between the British metropole and colonies, as well as the evolution of business organizations and practices, Globalization in a Glass contributes to ongoing debates about globalization, empire, and trade. It argues that, despite the might and power of the British Empire as a colonizing force, the effects of globalization, imperial trade networks, and colonial migration led to the domination of the most popular Continental European style of beer, the Pilsner, over British-style ales.

    The Boston University Food & Wine talk will begin at 6 pm at 808 Commonwealth Avenue , Room 124, in Boston. Reserve your free tickets through Eventbrite

  • Monday, March 9, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Curated Cuisine: Boston’s Booming Coffee Culture

    A trio of Boston’s leading coffee roasters joins WBUR’s Dianna Bell at WBUR CitySpace on March 9 from 6:30 – 8:30 for a conversation exploring the city’s evolving specialty coffee scene.

    Curated Cuisine is a monthly series examining all things edible, from the chefs cooking the food to the writers reviewing the recipes. Meet the people shaping the food industry, both local and national and enjoy a post-show bite inspired by the conversation.

    Dunkin’ may have captured the meme culture but there’s a bursting world of flavor brewing in Boston’s coffee scene. If you ask local coffee roasters they can likely tell you about farmers they’ve met in Guatemala or Ethiopia, the elevation from which their beans were grown or about the washed or natural process before drying. While Bostonians may drink iced coffee year-round, there is an evolving and evermore discerning palate in the bustling neighborhood coffee shop akin to a wine enthusiast’s interest in a grape’s terroir. Join Dianna Bell, WBUR arts and culture senior editor, in a conversation with three pioneers in the Boston coffee scene.

    Panelists

    George Howell — Founder and owner, George Howell Coffee

    Pack Katisomsakul — Owner, Newbery Street Coffee Roasters

    Jaime van Schyndel — Founder, barismo

    Guests will enjoy coffee tasting and can purchase items from local coffee roasters George Howell Coffee, Newbery Street and barismo. Tickets (from $12.51) available from Eventbrite HERE.

  • Monday, January 26, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Curated Cuisine: Diane Kochilas – Greatest Dishes from Athens

    Join chef Diane Kochilas for a conversation and cooking demo spotlighting the fresh flavors of her new Athens-inspired cookbook on January 26 at 6:30 pm..

    Curated Cuisine is a monthly series examining all things edible, from the chefs cooking the food to the writers reviewing the recipes. Meet the people shaping the food industry, both local and national and enjoy a post-show bite inspired by the conversation.

    Greek food has come a long way since the days of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The modern metropolis is flush with global influences and ingredients dancing alongside traditional Greek staples. Greek chef and television personality Diane Kochilas, an Athenian for over three decades, has written a new cookbook that dives deep into the savory twists and turns of cuisine in the Greek capital. In Athens: Food, Stories, Love, she offers a cipher to the changing Mediterranean mecca and also fresh takes on Greek classics. Join us for a conversation and live cooking demonstration with Kochilas moderated by WBUR senior correspondent and host Deborah Becker.

    Copies of the cookbook will be available to purchase from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith. Kochilas will sign and guests will enjoy a bite from the book following the conversation.

    This event is co-produced by Boston University Metropolitan College Programs in Food & Wine. Tickets (from $12.51) available through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Sunday, December 7, 12:00 noon – 1:15 pm – Flower Visitors at the Arboretum: Can Honeybees and Native Pollinators Co-Exist?

    Most of us know honeybees for the delicious honey they create (and the occasional sting!) But for scientists, the non-native honeybee represents a potential threat to our native bumblebees and butterflies. Biology Professor Dr. Richard Primack has been studying these insects at the Arnold Arboretum, observing flower visitors at over 600 plant species to determine if honeybees and native pollinators can co-exist. Join him for a research talk on December 7 from noon – 1:15 at the Hunnewell Lecture Hall. For more information visit https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events-2/program-catalog/

  • Thursday, October 23, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Awaiting Their Feast

    For the final event of the Fall 2025 Pépin Lecture Series on October 23 at 6 pm, author and historian Lori A. Flores joins us to discuss her latest book, Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19. Copies of Awaiting Their Feast will be available for purchase.

    Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with Latinx people, including the largely underpaid and migrant workers who harvest, process, cook, and sell this desirable food. Lori A. Flores traces how our dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II era to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the US Northeast as an unexpected microcosm of this national history.

    Spanning the experiences of food workers with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Central America, Flores’s narrative travels from New Jersey to Maine and examines different links in the food chain, from farming to restaurants to seafood processing to the deliverista rights movement. What unites this eclectic material is Flores’s contention that as our appetite for Latinx food has grown exponentially, the visibility of Latinx food workers has demonstrably decreased. This precariat is anything but passive, however, and has historically fought—and is still fighting—against low wages and exploitation, medical neglect, criminalization, and deeply ironic food insecurity.

    Lori Flores’ research and writing focus on Latino life, labor, immigration, and food history, particularly when it comes to the US Northeast. She is an expert on the Bracero Program and Mexican guestworkers, the US farmworker rights movement, food laborers’ conditions, and relationships between citizen and immigrant Latinos. She is also the author of Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement. She also directs Stony Brook’s Latin/x American and Caribbean Studies Center and Program.

    Free. The talk takes place in Room 124 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline. Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pepin-lecture-series-author-talk-with-lori-a-flores-tickets-1399688809909?aff=oddtdtcreator

  • Thursday, October 9, 6:00 pm – Cooling the Tropics

    The Boston University Food Studies Program has announced its Fall 2025 Pépin Lecture Series. On Thursday, October 9 at 6:00 pm Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart will present a talk based on her new book Cooling the Tropics. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as “essential” for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics.

    From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawaiʻi’s food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can—and must—be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawaiʻi and beyond.

    Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. This first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is a recipient of the press’s Scholars of Color First Book Award. It will be available for purchase on October 9.

    Her articles have appeared in refereed journals such as NAIS, Media+Environment, Food, Culture, and Society, and The Journal of Transnational American Studies, among others. She is the co-editor of the special issue “Radical Care,” for Social Text (2020), and the editor of Foodways of Hawaiʻi (Routledge, 2018). She is currently working on a project about cultural memory, commemoration, and hauntings in Hawaii State Parks. Professor Hobart holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, an MA in Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, and an MLS in Rare Books Librarianship and Archives Management from the Pratt Institute.

    The event will take place at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, in Fuller 124, and is free, but registration is recommended through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Thursday, October 9, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Cooling the Tropics

    Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as “essential” for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics. The October 9 lecture takes place in Room 124 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline at the Boston University School of Culinary Arts, as part of the Jacques Pepín Lecture Series, Register in advance on Eventbrite HERE.

  • Wednesday, April 16, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Don’t Waste Perfectly Good Food!

    Join the Boston University Food & Wine department on Wednesday, April 16 from 1 – 2 for a cooking demonstration with Irene and Mei Li in celebration of Earth month. Learn how to turn scraps into delicious dishes. Free, but reserve your spot through Eventbrite HERE. This event is part of the Spring 2025 Pépin Lecture Series and will take place at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 124.