Food under Italian Fascism is topic at URI Oct. 18 Honors Colloquium

Hope she covers Italy’s recent election of a neo-fascist government

By Kristen Curry

Historian Diana Garvin, who specializes in food and politics, will present at the 2022 University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium Tuesday, Oct. 18, on “Kitchen Rebellion: Food under Italian Fascism and Everyday Resistance.” Garvin is an assistant professor of Italian at the University of Oregon. With a focus on Mediterranean studies, she uses food to explain the relationships between Italian history and the world.

Garvin will speak at 7 p.m. at Edwards Hall on the Kingston Campus, as part of the fall Honors Colloquium, “Just Good Food,” which will be presented in person and streamed live (video links are available the day of each event at the link above).

Garvin’s lectures often explore themes around Italian food, such as the birth of Neapolitan pizza and the G-8 pesto debates, as well as futurist food. 

Her commentaries have been published in The Washington Post, Punch and Saveur and she has appeared as a guest on podcasts including “55 Voices for Democracy” by the Los Angeles Review of Books and Heritage Radio Network’s “A Taste of the Past.”

This year, she published her first book, the Civil Eats Summer 2022 Reading List selection and Modern Language Association award winner Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work. 

She has also published a travel guide, Let’s Go: Spain and Portugal, and cites her favorite Italian proverb as “O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra” (“Eat this soup or jump out the window”).

Garvin received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Cornell University and completed her postdoctoral research at the American Academy in Rome. 

Her research has been supported by Fulbright, Getty Library, Oxford University, the Julia Child Foundation, and a variety of other fellowships.

The URI Honors Colloquium is the University’s premier lecture series. Hosted by the University’s Honors Program, this university-wide educational forum is free and open to the public. 

This year’s lecture series is bringing several experts to the Kingston Campus to examine local and global food systems, examining ways to create equitable, sustainable and resilient food systems, on Tuesday evenings through Dec. 13. Learn more about the fall colloquium.