Whither Seasons in our Fast Food Lives: Reflections on Islamic ritual memory and the season’s first fruits in Turkey

Thursday, May 24

McKenzie Hall, Room 125, 4 pm

Presented by Global Studies Institute and the Omar Alaskari Fund
Cosponsored by Gaston, Food Studies and Folklore

Professor Turkoz examines blogs and hypertext dictionaries to unpack memories about seasonal Islamic food rituals. These accounts are scattered across a range of food blogs; they are posted as childhood memories or descriptions of prior generations by their offspring. Meanwhile, Islamic sites reproduce hadith about the Prophet Muhammad’s food and nutrition practices. Across both these sets of accounts, Turkoz finds nostalgia for the anticipation of the first fruit, rather than the taste of the fruit itself.