Book Delves into Levant’s Culinary History

New Book Delves in the Levant’s

Culinary History By Vicki Valosik

CCAS is pleased to announce the publication of Making Levantine Cuisine: Foodways of the Modern Mediterranean by the University of Texas Press. The volume, edited by MAAS alum Dr. Anny Gaul (‘12), CCAS Adjunct Assistant Professor Dr. Graham Pitts, and CCAS Editorial Director Vicki Valosik, sits at the intersection of food studies and Middle East studies, bringing much-needed scholarly attention to the region’s culinary cultures and the intertwining histories and migrations of its foods.

Making Levantine Cuisine offers a diversity of perspectives—from scholarly articles that examine local, regional, and global aspects of Levantine foodways to personal essays and recipes that reflect first-hand and lived culinary experiences. “The contributors come from a range of career stages and disciplines, and include authors with culinary, not just scholarly, expertise,” writes Gaul. “As a result, the book’s chapters provide a range of distinct (though connected) contributions: substantiating and historicizing the appropriation and erasure of Palestinian and Armenian foodways; revealing the often-overlooked role of women and rural workers in cultural production; and critiquing the labels––national and otherwise––that are frequently appended to Levantine foods.”

In addition to the book’s three editors, several of its contributors are also members of the CCAS community. MAAS alums Dr. Samuel Dolbee (‘10) and Dr. Chris Gratien (‘08) coauthored the chapter “Adana Kebabs and Antep Pistachios: Place, Displacement, and Cuisine of the Turkish South,” which explores how foods from Syria’s borderlands were incorporated into Turkish national culinary traditions. Second-year MAAS student Antonio Tahhan—also a food writer and chef—contributed the essay “Pistachios and

Pomegranates: Vignettes from Aleppo” about his experiences studying Syrian food culture as a Fulbright scholar. Gaul’s conclusion to the volume includes a poem by PalestinianAmerican Zeina Azzam, who served in numerous roles at CCAS, including assistant director, during the Center’s foundational years.

Ultimately, Making Levantine Cuisine seeks to address two main questions: What is the history of the Levant’s cuisine? And why has so little scholarly attention been paid to this topic? It was this lack of scholarship that inspired Pitts, the former American Druze Foundation Fellow at CCAS, to suggest that the Center host a critical food studies symposium, and eventually produce the book, to address these topics. “In working on a book manuscript about Lebanon’s World War I famine, I realized that the project lacked sufficient grounding in how food was produced and consumed before the war. There was precious little existing scholarship on which to rely. So, I was really lucky to be at CCAS, which had the resources to support the symposium, and to be able to collaborate with Anny Gaul and Vicki Valosik on the volume. Now, we hope, others who approach this topic will be able to build on the collective work we have done.” The symposium, which the Center hosted in summer of 2019, was organized by Pitts and CCAS Events Manager Maddie Fisher. The daylong event brought together scholars, journalists and food writers to share research and workshop papers, many of which are included in Making Levantine Cuisine. CCAS also sponsored a public event at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, featuring talks by several of the chapter authors. The symposium culminated in a collaborative, hands-on cooking demonstration in Georgetown’s dining hall kitchen. The demonstration was led by