In Lebanon during the 1920s and 1930s, as elsewhere, a growing bourgeoisie necessitated an emerging science of housewifery and the forging of new modes of moral, national, and social conduct. The "mother of the nation," and her skill and ease in managing and administering the home constituted the successful, albeit confined, modern national subject. Food, its substance as well as its preparation and presentation, were central to the experiences and representations of national inclusion. Cuisine, and its links to new bourgeoisie prescriptions of womanhood, motherhood, and citizenship are powerfully articulated in girls' schools. In these penultimate sites of inculcation, the preparation, presentation, and nutritional value of food was a key site for the discipline of tadbir al-manzil, or home economics. What can the pedagogical focus on food in the emerging science of housewifery tell us about rapidly shifting demarcations of taste, distinction, and subjectivityt How did the introduction of "western" ingredients, such as pasta for example, influence and interact with the imperative to forge and define an "authentic" local cuisine It was in this period that dishes such as samaka harra [spicy fish] and dajaj musahhab [pulled chicken] became subjects of instruction in girls' schools. These meals, already common fare in many middle class households, were now squarely placed inside the institutional space of the school. A "professional," teacher replaced the long-standing role of mothers and grandmothers. At the same new spatial norms of the ideal household reshaped the kitchen as a site of domestic authority and confinement. Utilizing memoirs, cookbooks, recipes, oral history, and the press, this paper explores food as a lens to trace new formation of space, self, and society in the labyrinthine contours of a new citizenry.

Scholarship on the place of sugar in modern history has taught us invaluable lessons on how food reveals the intricate interactions between capitalism, the social quality of eating, and the cultivation of taste. With a focus on sugar and its refinement, this paper explores the formative connections between agricultural production, population shifts, and cultural renditions of the cosmopolitan and the local in nineteenth century Egypt. Shifts in population and consumer demand resulted in significant changes in agricultural and industrial production in the second half of nineteenth century Egypt. Under Khedive Isma`il, the cultivation of sugarcane spread throughout central and southern Egypt, becoming Egypt's secondary cash crop. Until this period, Egyptian sugarcane was exported to Europe for refining. The rapid growth of European populations in Cairo, Alexandria, and the Delta and the consequent increased demand for refined sugar spurred Egyptians industrialists to establish the first refinery at Hawamdiyya, south of Cairo, in 1881. Accompanying these shifts in production was the appearance of bakeries and sweet shops in Egyptian towns and cities that transformed refined sugar into an array of pastries. The forms that these pastries assumed drew from the Ottoman cultural realm as well as the diverse milieu of cultural influences that flooded nineteenth-century Egypt. Italian gelato, French croissants, bread made from refined flour, and an array of cookies and cakes appeared in Egyptian towns and cities. While the inspiration underlying this production drew from a wide geographic range, sweet things acquired new significance and context as Egyptians consumed them. How indeed did refined sugar and its consumption in new forms overlap, coalesce, and conflict with the evolution of Egyptian cultural identity during the colonial periodo Drawing from a rich array of sources including periodicals, memoirs, and newspapers, this paper explores the evolving significance of refined sugar during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In tracing sugar's journey from the refinery to the bakery to the consumer, this paper tackles food as a transitional border that bridged imperial and national culture. It engages consumption as a potent force that did not simply respond to but inspired new modes of production. In parallel fashion this paper questions the seemingly ubiquitous power of cosmopolitanism by critically exploring how Egyptians endowed sugar and sweet things with the taste of the local.

Copyrighting culinary heritage has become an increasing part of the international legal landscape. European Union courts, for example, have ruled that only Greek-made cheese may be labeled and sold as Feta, and that producers in Italy's North-western Friuli-Venezia Giulia region must stop bottling its dry white wine under the name Tocia Friulano because consumers may confuse this product with Tokaji Aszu, Hungary's famous dessert wine. More recently, in 2008, the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI), in a campaign called Hands off Our Dishes, declared that it planned to sue Israel to force it to stop marketing and selling prepared Middle Eastern foods, such as falafel and hummus, as Israeli. Although a large portion of the Jewish population of Israel is of Middle Eastern descent, ALI rejects outright the idea that these dishes may be part of an Israeli national cuisine. Using this case as my starting point, I will explore the economic and political implications of this claim. ALI's president, Fadi Abboud, has made these aspects clear, alleging that Lebanese producers are losing "tens of millions of dollars annually" because of Israeli misrepresentation, and declaring: "It is not enough they are stealing our land. They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine." In addition, I will examine ALI's claim from a Middle Eastern Jewish perspective. I will ask how Middle Eastern Jewish migration to Israel participated in the creation of an Israeli cuisine; Has Middle Eastern cuisine contributed to the formation of a Mizrahi identityM How have specifically Shami and/or Palestinian foods been incorporated into a Mizrahi cuisine What, if anything, does hummus consumption say about Mizrahi integration into Israeli society More generally, how are dishes and cuisines indigenizedi Has hummus, for example, become "authentically" Israeli, and what precisely does that meani Lastly, what does the Hand off Our Dishes campaign say about the way ALI understands Middle Eastern Jewry and how it locates Israel as Western or Easterns