Eat, Drink & Be Merry? The Politics of Food & Drink: Hunger Prevention

Please join British, Irish and Empire Studies at the University of Texas at Austin on Tuesday, December 6, at noon CST, 6 p.m. GMT, for the final session of our virtual series, “Eat, Drink and Be Merry? The Politics of Food and Drink.” The topic is “Hunger Prevention.” Rachel Herrmann of Cardiff University will speak on “Vessels on a Vessel: Senauki, Water, and an Anti-Cattle Protest in Colonial Georgia.” Anita Howarth of Brunel University will discuss “Social imaginaries of the hungry child: Free school meals in 21^st century Britain.” Raj Patel of the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs will chair.

Advance registration is required. Please use this link:

https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcsce2trzwjGNBAyjqfDHswVHo-iF4_5tGb

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Questions? Please contact BIES staff at Marian.Barber@austin.utexas.edu.

Profs. Herrmann and Howarth offer more on their planned presentations:

Herrmann: This talk considers approaches to histories of hunger that examine water and borders. By considering water and borders, historians can better recognize Muscogee (Creek) women’s labor, and explore the water networks and plants that enabled Muscogees to prevent hunger in a period characterized by outmigration, ethnogenesis, inter-imperial competition, and colonization.

Howarth: We are currently living through the third global food crisis in 14 years, an ‘apocalyptic’ one in its likely consequences for the poorest in societies, according to the Governor of the Bank of England. The paper presented here is the second in a series on the social imaginaries of hunger constructed in popular culture through archetypical figures. Here, I explore how hunger is constructed through the figure of the child denied access to free school meals while living in poverty or destitution. I do so through an examination of material practices, discursive practices, and the configuration of the hungry child as a trope of failing Britain.