Calendar of Events
Note: Meetings are usually held on the second Sunday of each month, September through May, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Currently we are meeting via Zoom, but in-person meetings are held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland, and occasionally at other venues. The meetings are open to anyone. However, certain meetings may require a fee.
The Kingdom of Rye: Russian Food and National Identity
Speaker: Darra Goldstein
Williamstown, Massachusetts
SPEAKER BIO
Darra Goldstein, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita, at Williams College, is the founding editor of Gastronomica and editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. She also serves as series editor of California Studies in Food and Culture from the University of California Press. Darra has won numerous prizes for her work in food, including James Beard and IACP awards. She’s the author of eight cookbooks, including The Georgian Feast (the 1994 IACP Julia Child Cookbook of the Year) and Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, named one of the ten best cookbooks of 2020 by Forbes, Esquire, and the Washington Post. The volume Cultured, a major compendium on preserved foods written with Cortney Burns and Richard Martin, will appear in Fall 2026. Darra has consulted for the Council of Europe on using food as a tool for tolerance and diversity and has held distinguished fellowships in food studies at the University of Toronto and the University of Melbourne. In 2020 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Darra sits on the board of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and is a member of the advisory “Kitchen Cabinet” of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
TALK DESCRIPTION
This talk explores Russian food and national identity from the earliest times to the present. Ever since Peter the Great opened his country to the West, Russians have struggled with ambivalence toward outside influences, embracing or rejecting Western culinary trends depending on the political moment. The issue of foreign food continues to be fraught today. The economic sanctions imposed by Western powers following the 2014 annexation of Crimea led Russia to ban certain imports. Widespread food shortages jumpstarted a revival of archaic techniques and artisanal production, transforming Russia’s gastronomic landscape in marvelous ways but also causing a revival of culinary nationalism. Today, Russia is using food as a weapon in the horrific war in Ukraine, an act that follow’s Stalin’s playbook from the 1930s collectivization campaign. This presentation will celebrate the beauty of Russian culinary practices while acknowledging food’s inevitable role in political life.