Italy before Italy: How Italian food created an “Italian” culture
November 15, 2017
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
What we call “identity” means cultural, more than political unity, that’s why we can talk about an “Italian identity” far before the country gets its political unification in the second half of the XIXth century. Each urban reality is different, and excels for specific products, but they all are part of a larger network, because of the exchanges (in products and knowledge: men, books, products, recipes) that share each local identity in a broader national one (even when this does not exist in a political sense). No central authority can be found, both in gastronomy and in politics. This is the secret of Italian weakness, but also of its strength and richness of culture and flavors.
Massimo Montanari (1949) teaches Medieval History and Food History at Bologna University (Department of History and Cultures). He is the author of numerous publications, and the founder and director of the Master “Food history and culture” instituted in 2002 at Bologna University.
Co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute at Chicago, the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, the Institute for the Humanities and the Department of History at UIC
Date posted
Jun 18, 2020
Date updated
Sep 25, 2020