• News
    • News
      • Latest News
      • Announcements
      • Calls for Papers
      • Vacancies
      • New PhD-research
    • Events
      • Events
      • NICA recommends
      • Event Calendar
  • Education
    • About NICA’s educational program
    • Course Overview
    • Core Courses
  • Research
    • Dissertation Defenses
    • Current PhD Research
    • Past PhD Research
  • Podcast
  • Organization
    • About us
    • Mission Statement
    • Becoming a member
    • Membership Directory
    • Organize an activity
  • Contact
  • Menu Menu

PhD | Marking Memory on a Plate: Food Narratives from the Middle East

January 21, 2020/in PhDs /by Eloe Kingma

PhD-Candidate: Erica Moukarzel | University of Amsterdam | Marking Memory on a Plate: Food Narratives from the Middle East  | Supervisors: Esther Peeren and Noa Roei

This project investigates food in relation to sensory belonging within the context of the Middle East. It explores how food comes to shape identities and their sense of place, transmitted through affective and embodied narratives. Focusing on the Middle Eastern plate, the project draws out the intersections of food with language, colonization, gender, and nostalgia, and the ways these concepts come to be inscribed in their specific cultural contexts. Furthermore, the project underscores cultural ties between one place and another, as it bridges the in-betweens of food’s spatial entanglements, disassembling places and their respective borders. Finally, the project aims to map out a new interdisciplinary approach to (Middle Eastern) cuisine as a narrative that emphasizes on stories of common heritage, tied together by migratory routes and political interjections.

Food and its related narratives, rituals and components, from ingredients, to recipes, to ways of cooking, serving and eating, carry a double record: first as field recordings of the environment – be it natural or political – and second as historical documents of events and technological developments. The results are passionate narratives of survival, triumph, grief, celebration, forgiveness and strife, marks of protest and resistance to conditions natural and human-made. These narratives, in all their forms, are at the core of this project. By focusing on narrative, the project aims to address the complications of colonial pasts, displacement, and globalization through a double focus on objects that represent dishes and foods (cooking books, cooking shows, etc.), as well as on the components of the dishes in and of themselves. This second focus – my archeological investigation of the material ingredients of the said dishes – is based on my  understanding of the plate itself as a narrative that is often ignored but that can, when carefully attended to, offer important insights to the broader narratives that envelop it.

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about our news, lectures, seminars, workshops and more.

Share this page

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on X
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about our news, lectures, seminars, workshops and more.

NICA archive 2010 – 2020

Read all articles published by Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis 2010 to 2020.

Affiliated Universities

  • Leiden University
  • Tilburg University
  • Radboud University
  • University of Amsterdam
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
  • University of Maastricht
  • Utrecht University
  • Open University

National Research Schools

  • ARCHON, Research School of Archaeology
  • Huizinga Instituut
  • LOT, Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics
  • NISIS, Netherlands Interuniversity School of Islamic Studies
  • NOG, Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies
  • NOSTER, Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion
  • OIKOS, National Research School in Classical Studies
  • OSK, Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History
  • OSL, Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap
  • OZSW, Dutch Research School of Philosophy
  • Posthumus Institute, Research School for Economic and Social History
  • Research School for Medieval Studies
  • RSPH, Research School Political History
  • RMeS, Research School for Media Studies
  • WTMC, Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture

Useful Links

  • Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)
  • Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR)
  • Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
  • Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
  • Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM)
  • Babylon: Center for the Study of Superdiversity, Tilburg University
  • Benelux Association for the Study of Art, Culture, and the Environment (BASCE)
  • Centre for BOLD Cities
  • Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University
  • Leiden University Centre for Cultural Analysis (LUCAS)
  • Platform for Postcolonial Readings
  • Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH)
  • Research Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies (PTR)
  • Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam
  • Centre for Environmental Humanities (UU)
© 2025 - Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)
Website by Nikolai NL Design Studio
  • Privacy
  • Contact
Scroll to top Scroll to top Scroll to top