Cooking with Trujillo: Culinary Collaborationism and the Dominican Dictatorship

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Research and Creative Activities.

Please join us for a research conversation with Professor Keja Valens (SSU) who will speak about her forthcoming book, Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes for National Independence. This talk explores how twentieth-century Dominican women cookbook writers garnered domestic control under and with waves of an increasingly dictatorial regime as they navigated and nourished ruling national tastes for a version of creoleness aligned with Trujillo’s project of eliminating Blackness in the Dominican Republic.

Keja Valens is a Professor of English at Salem State University where she teaches and researches Caribbean literature, literatures of the Americas, queer theory, and food studies. She is co-editor of Passing Lines: Immigration and Sexuality, The Barbara Johnson Reader, and Querying Consent, and author of Desire between Women in Caribbean Literature.

This event is free and open to the public. It will take place in person and virtually using HyFlex technology. You can participate in this talk remotely. Register to attend this event remotely. Otherwise, please join us in the Faculty Reading Room at the Frederick E. Berry Library at 5 pm on Thursday, October 19.

Students and guests who anticipate needing accommodations due to a disability or who have questions about access may contact disability services.