ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan is offering an intellectual feast this fall intended to stimulate fresh thinking about food and global history. The feast, which includes U-M courses, public lectures, an international conference, food films, exhibits and catering by local ethnic restaurants, comes packaged in this year’s theme semester, “Food in Global History.”

Raymond Grew, professor of history and editor of the international quarterly, Comparative Studies in Society and History, notes that “as far as we know, the Food Semester is a unique scholarly event in terms of its scale and variety. No one has ever assembled so many food scholars from such a variety of disciplines for a project of this nature. We expect to discover and share some intriguing new insights on ways, through food, of studying interconnections among societies. We also expect to achieve some new insights into history seen globally.” U-M theme semesters, which are interdisciplinary, focus on a general problem that human beings have confronted throughout history and will face well into the future. The theme semesters integrate undergraduate classes, public lectures by renowned scholars, films and exhibits.

Prior theme semesters have included “The Comedy Semester,” “The Theory and Practice of Evil,” “Death, Extinction, and the Future of Humanity: Approaching the Millennium” and “The Americas: Beyond 1492.”

Grew, who, with colleagues, organized the food theme semester, says that the study of food throughout global history is terribly complex and rich because it has social, psychological, cultural, economic, health and religious effects that evolve throughout time.

“There have been strict rules about who can and cannot eat what foods, and where and when,” he explains, “and those rules define who we are, how we behave and how we survive, economically as well as physically.”

Nations even demark their identities with food, according to Grew. “For instance, when India and Italy formed themselves into nations, writers developed cookbooks that drew from regional cuisines but found ways to define them as part of a single national cuisine. Similarly, the Japanese cannot imagine that rice from any other nation could be as good as theirs, because their rice is so fundamentally connected to their land, history and culture.

“We expect to have a great deal of fun with this topic,” he adds, “while trying to stimulate some fresh thinking about global history.”

The public is invited to a series of eight free lectures that will be followed by receptions catered by the Blue Nile, Zingerman’s, Mr. Rib, the Ayse Restaurant and the Kana restaurant. All the lectures will be at 4 p.m. in the East Conference Room, Rackham Building, except the first one by Jan Longone. The lecture schedule is:

–Sept. 19: Food historian Jan Longone on “American Cookery: The Bicentennial, 1796-1996,” at the Clements Library.

–Sept. 24: Adam Drewnowski, U-M professor of nutrition, on “Starving Among Plenty: Dieting and Body Image in Contemporary Society.”

–Oct. 1: Paolo Squatriti, U-M professor of history, on “Dark Age Gastronomics: The Barbarian at the Table.”

–Oct. 15: Rafia Zafar, U-M professor of English, on “Cooking Up a Past: Two African-American Culinary Narratives.”

–Oct. 29: Rebecca Spang, University of London professor of history, on “Cookery as Patrimony: Defining Frenchness.”

–Nov. 12: Richard Ford, U-M professor of anthropology, on “Native American and Colonial European Food Exchange.”

–Nov. 19: Frances and Joseph Gies on “International Cuisine in the High Middle Ages.”

–Dec. 3: Daniel Longone, U-M professor of chemistry, on “Men and Their Wines: Madeira Wine Traditions in Early America.”

The Food Semester also will include 13 undergraduate courses on a variety of topics, including food in literature; food, culture and nationalism; therapeutic nutrition; eating disorders; nutrition and evolution; and edible and “drinkable” wild plants.

Additionally, an international conference, “Food in Global History,” Oct. 25-27 at the Rackham Building, will feature 30 scholars discussing the contemporary reshaping of the human diet, processes of change in food systems, cross-cultural aspects of food, food rituals and social barriers related to food.

Some conference highlights include Claude Fischler of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France, presenting “The ‘Mad Cow’ Crisis: A Global Perspective”; Elisabet Helsing of WHO-Europe discussing “Food and Nutrition Trends East and West”; John D’Arms, U-M professor of classics, speaking on “Ancient Roman Spectacle and the Banquets of the Powerful”; and Raymond Sokolov of the Wall Street Journal discussing “The Human Foodstuff Database: What It Is; Why We Need One.”

The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor also will screen free food- oriented films at 5 p.m. on Fridays. The films will be:

The U-M Graduate Library, the Clements and Kelsey museums, and the Museum of Art also are mounting exhibits of cookbooks, artworks and archeological artifacts featuring food during the Food Semester.

For more information, call Raymond Grew or James Schaefer at