The exhibition “African Foods: History and Culture” will open at 5:30 p.m., Monday, April 16, in Fretwell Building, Room 121.
During this opening, students from Akin Ogundiran’s “African Civilization” course will deliver poster presentations. They have studied African food culture from historical, archaeological and ethnographic perspectives, starting with the history of agricultural revolution in Africa during the early Holocene, about 11,000 years ago.
Students have examined how these food cultures can write the deep-time history of Africa, and they have explored contemporary questions of food security in Africa especially with reference to globalization, global warming and the capitalist interventions that now market certain African cultigens as super-foods.
Students also have been studying how recent African immigrants are shaping the food culture of Charlotte. They have visited African and mainstream grocery stores to collect samples of African foods, and they have dined in African restaurants to learn about the African etiquette of eating and social interactions — including gender and class.
The final version of the student-curated “African Foods: History and Culture” will be displayed in the Africana Studies Department.