Join us on 12th December for a lecture that reveals how every meal carries centuries of power, identity, and quiet resistance.
About the Lecture
We like to believe that food is comfort, culture, nostalgia, and it is- but it is also political. The kitchen, far from being a private space, is one of the earliest sites where gender, caste, nationalism, and colonial influence shaped everyday life.
In this talk, Manjari unpacks a deceptively simple question: How did our plates become battlegrounds of power, and why does it matter today?
Moving between literature, film, popular media, and lived experience, she explores:
- How colonialism reshaped our ingredients and hierarchies
- How caste & purity politics determine who cooks and who eats
- How national identity gets woven into recipes
- Why some cuisines are celebrated and others erased
Ultimately, this session reminds us that food is never just food. Every bite is part of a much larger story still being written.
About the Lecturer
Manjari is a PhD candidate in English at the University of South Florida, with a Master’s from the University of Exeter. Her research examines how food, memory, and gender shape resistance and identity across the Global South and its diasporas.
She teaches courses like Food in South Asian Literature, where she guides students through the deliciously complicated ways meals carry emotion, power, and politics. She often jokes that her research leaves her hungry, and her audiences, curious.
About unLecture
unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephen’s, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an ordinary evening into a conversation you’ll think about long after it ends.
Where it is
Address : Siyah Arthouse, Siyah Arthouse, 3rd Floor 261, Plot 8, Westend Marg, Saidulajab, Saket, New Delhi, Delhi 110030, India
Get directions