Boston Flora

Tag: Boston University

  • Thursday, March 20, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – Abuelita’s Kitchen with Dr. Sarah Portnoy

    Join documentary filmmaker, activist, and scholar Dr. Sarah Portnoy to discuss her documentary and museum exhibit, Abuelita’s Kitchen. The event, part of the Pépin Lecture Series at Boston University, will take place at 6 pm at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 124, in Boston. Free. You may reserve a spot through Eventbrite HERE.

    This multimedia exhibition, led by USC professor Sarah Portnoy, shares the food stories of ten Indigenous, mestiza, Mexican-American, and Afro-Mexican grandmothers, or abuelas, in Los Angeles through photography, text, a documentary film, kitchen artifacts, family recipes, and audio stories. The exhibition examines food, identity, place, and culture, showing how these abuelas preserve traditions for future generations. 

    Abuelita’s Kitchen: Mexican Food Stories features 22 photographs and one large map and 10 objects, including molcajetes, a comal, a tortilla press and more, one from each abuela in the exhibition. The exhibition explores the dishes the grandmothers make in their home kitchens, including chiles en nogada, mole, tamales, pozole, mixiotes, enchiladas, and more. Their migration stories are detailed in a colorful map of Mexico and L.A., while a final section of the exhibition presents their identities as traditional cooks, mothers, and grandmothers through photographs with their family members. Jessica Magaña-Sandoval is the exhibition’s photographer. A 28-minute documentary directed by Ebony Bailey, also called Abuelita’s Kitchen: Mexican Food Stories, will screen continuously at LA Cocina during the exhibition.  The project has an Instagram account, AbuelitasCooking. 

    The exhibition reveals each abuela’s relationship to Mexican cuisine, their birthplaces in Mexico, and the city of Los Angeles, where the grandmothers live. For that, the 17 students of Portnoy´s USC Annenberg class, “Recording the Voices of Latinx Women & Food in Los Angeles: A Multimedia Oral History Project,” have created a website and audio stories and videos which will be available for viewing online on Telemundo’s streaming platform and on smart devices via QR codes. The audio and video tell the stories of these women, two of whom were born in the U.S., while the rest immigrated from places such as Mexico City, Puebla, Yucatán, Jalisco and Guerrero, bringing with them their knowledge of traditional dishes. 

  • Tuesday, February 18, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – Pépin Lecture Series: A Talk with Sara B. Franklin

    Join Sara B. Franklin at Boston University, 928 Commonwealth Avenue Room 110, on February 18 at 6 pm for a conversation about her latest book, The Editor, to kickoff the Boston University Food & Wine Program’s spring 2025 lecture series. The event is free but registration is requested at www.eventbrite.com. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

    Legendary editor Judith Jones, the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this “surprising, granular, luminous, and path-breaking biography” (Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem).

    At Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing.

    During her more than fifty years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launched new genres and trends in literature. At the forefront of the cookbook revolution, she published the who’s who of food writing: Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child. Through her tenacious work behind the scenes, Jones helped turn these authors into household names, changing cultural mores and expectations along the way.

    Judith’s work spanned decades of America’s most dramatic cultural change—from the end of World War II through the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s equality—and the books she published acted as tools of quiet resistance. Now, based on exclusive interviews, never-before-seen personal papers, and years of research, her astonishing career is explored for the first time in this “thorough and humanizing portrait” (Kirkus Reviews).

    About the Speaker

    Sara B. Franklin is a writer, teacher, and oral historian. She received a 2020–2021 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholars grant for her research on Judith Jones, and teaches courses on food, writing, embodied culture, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is the author of The Editor, the editor of Edna Lewis, and coauthor of The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. She holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and studied documentary storytelling at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives with her children in Kingston, New York. Find out more at SaraBFranklin.com.

  • Monday, December 9, 6:30 pm – Curated Cuisine: Historian Jessica B. Harris on the Culinary & Cultural Traditions of Kwanzaa

    Curated Cuisine is a monthly series at CitySpace at the Lavine Broadcast Center in Brookline hosted by WBUR and Boston University 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.

    James Beard Award-winning culinary historian Jessica B. Harris joins Tamika R. Francis, founder of Food & Folklore, for a conversation about the updated edition of her book, A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook: Celebrating the Holiday with Family, Community and Tradition.  The event takes place December 9 at 6:30 pm. Harris is the author of 12 critically acclaimed books documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, which inspired the Netflix docuseries of the same name.

    A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook explores African American culture, food and family, featuring recipes and stories to help this generation create unique holiday traditions. Copies of the book will be available for purchase from our bookstore partner Frugal Books. Harris will sign and guests will enjoy a bite from the book following the conversation. Reserved tickets $30, General Admission $20, BU faculty and staff $15. Register HERE

  • Wednesday, August 15, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm, & Saturday, August 17, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm – Going to Ground

    This coming August marks the installation of artist LaRissa Rogers’ “Going to Ground” – a site specific sculpture on The Rose Kennedy Greenway exploring the life of Zipporah Potter Atkins, the first-known Black woman to own a home in Boston in 1670. Potter Atkins’ home rested on land now cared for by The Greenway in the North End, which was brought to light by Dr. Vivian Johnson, Professor Emerita of Boston University, after 6 years of archival research.

    Throughout the month of August, The Conservancy will be offering a series of events to engage with this piece: On Thursday, August 15th, from 5-8pm, and Saturday, August 17th, from 2-5pm, The Greenway is hosting two adobe brick-making workshops with artist LaRissa Rogers. Come get your hands in the soil, and help us craft adobe bricks which will be used in the activation of the public sculpture. On Thursday, August 22nd, from 4-7pm, drop by The Greenway during a durational performance by artists LaRissa Rogers (@larissa_rogers) and Zalika Azim (@26thletter) working together with collaborators – including their moms, aunts, sisters, and several Boston-based artists – to lay adobe soil bricks on-site for the foundation of the sculpture. On Saturday, August 24th, from 4pm-7pm, join us for a communal meal and party produced by SIDE Presents (@sidepresents) honoring Dr. Vivian Johnson and celebrating the installation of the sculpture.

  • Wednesday, April 10, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – The Taste of Water

    Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? Christy Spackman will be joining the BU Food Studies Programs as a guest in the spring 2024 Pépin Lecture Series to discuss her book, The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage.

    The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examaming the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tasted and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible – but substantial – sensory labor involved in creating tap water.

    Copies of Spackman’s book will be available to purchase on-site at the event. Lecture is free. Register on Eventbrite HERE

  • Friday, April 21, 6:30 pm Eastern – Choose Your Own Disaster: Adventuring through Hollywood’s Attempts to Tackle Climate Change, Live and Online

    Earth Week with WBUR is a week long series of events on the environment and climate change leading up to Earth Day (April 22, 2023). Join them for conversations, performances and more, focused on celebrating and protecting our planet. On Friday, April 21, at WBUR CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, and online, join Ben Brock Johnson and panelists including Samantha Montano — author of Disasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis and assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

    Hollywood is full of big screen metaphors and on-the-nose cliches about climate change. And it turns out audiences love a disaster flick, from world-ending meteor strikes to the next ice age or even the mysterious switching of the planet’s polarity.

    But IN A WORLD… where we actually need to talk about the real issues we’re facing, can disaster movies help? Join Endless Thread podcast co-host Ben Brock Johnson and the WBUR Podcasts team for a night of absurdity, fun and some real discussion of what our blockbuster movie industry has gotten wrong—and right—about the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced.

    You will have the power to choose which decisions we make to stop a world-ending climate threat inspired by scenes from our favorite disaster films. Along the way, we’ll check in with a panel of experts who will help us understand if any of these events could ever happen and, if so, how we can navigate the real future. Tickets are $5 – $25. Buy tickets at www.wbur.org

  • Tuesday, April 12, 5:15 pm – 6:30 pm – Pipe Dreams: The Pursuit of Desalination and the Promise of a Water-Abundant Future in the 1950s and 1960s, Online

    Driven by the strong conviction that water resources needed to be managed, controlled, and used in a rational manner, fears about not being able to meet present and future water needs triggered and justified the proliferation of large water infrastructure projects in the post-WWII period—and also the pursuit of desalination. Its potential as a new, untapped source of fresh water carried promises of modernization and development, and especially appealed to governments looking to develop, diversify, and decentralize sources of supply. By uncovering how several countries and international organizations imagined the potential of desalination, and tried to jumpstart its widespread adoption, shows how the story of desalination adds new layers to our understanding of the development era. This Massachusetts Historical Society lecture with Elizabeth Hameeteman of Boston University will take place Tuesday, April 12 at 5:15 pm, online. Register to attend online

    The Environmental History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

    Please note, this is an online event hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information.

  • Thursday, November 11, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Climate Talk: Tree Equity – What is it? A Case Study in Boston, Online

    Tower Hill Botanic Garden is dedicated to understanding the ways climate change impacts our world and exploring methods we can use to combat its effects and improve our climate outlook. “Climate Talks” are an opportunity to connect with experts in the field to learn and understand the current effects of climate change and explore ways we can make a difference. This Climate Talk is sponsored by CounterAct Climate Change Project.

    This talk will explore Tree Equity. Trees play an important role in building healthy and resilient communities. Yet, depending on where they live, not all residents receive the same benefits of trees. Some residents may live in rural communities surrounded by trees while others may live in urban “tree deserts”. The unequal distribution of trees in our landscape has a long history tied to issues such as redlining, land use patterns, and geography. The patchwork of tree distribution has become referred to as “Tree Equity” and is tied to issues of race, class, and wealth. Using various sources of data, including environmental and demographic data, Speak for the Trees partnered with Boston University’s Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health (URBAN) to create an interactive map that explores the relationships between people, place, and tree canopy coverage in Boston. In this talk David Meshoulam, PhD, Executive Director of Speak for the Trees, and Raquel Jimenez, graduate student in the URBAN program, will discuss their partnership and will share the results of their Tree Equity map and how it informs the work of the organization. They will also share tools available for similar analyses in other communities. David (pronounced Dah-veed) co-founded Speak for the Trees in 2018. Trained as a science educator, his work has focused on ways to increase understanding of the connections between science, culture, and history and to empower them to be change agents. He holds a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a Senior Fellow at the Environmental Leadership Program, and is co-chair of the Urban Ecology Collaborative. Free to attend thanks to our Sponsor (Please register for Zoom link HERE)

  • Tuesday, October 29, 6:00 pm – Food Routes: Growing Bananas in Iceland and Other Tales from the Logistics of Eating

    Even if we think we know a lot about good and healthy food—buying organic, subscribing to slow food, reading Eater—we likely don’t know much about how our food gets to the table. What happens between the farm and the kitchen? Why are all avocados from Mexico? Why does a restaurant in Maine order lamb from New Zealand? In Food Routes, food historian and food futurist Robyn Metcalfe explores an often overlooked aspect of the global food system: how food moves from producer to consumer. A lecturer and research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and director of Food+City, who earned her PhD in history at Boston University, Metcalfe finds that the food supply chain is adapting to our increasingly complex demands for both personalization and convenience—but, she says, it won’t be an easy ride.

    This Pepin Lecture will take place at 871 Commonwealth Avenue, College of General Studies, Room 505, on October 29 from 6 – 8 and is free and open to the public. Registration recommended at www.bu.edu/foodandwine

  • Thursday, October 10, 6:00 pm – Meat Planet

    In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger, and since then the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread through the media like wildfire. Racing against population growth and climate change, researchers have dedicated their efforts to making sustainable protein. Meat Planet, by historian and University of California, Berkeley PhD Benjamin Wurgaft, explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called “cultured meat”—and asks what it means if this new creation might be the future of food. The free lecture will take place October 10 at 6 pm at 871 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston University College of General Studies, Room 505. To be sure you’ll have a seat, visit www.bu.edu/foodandwine