The Power of Barbeque

Nir Avieli

Nir Avieli. Photo by Dani Machlis/BGU

Pincus Lecture explores power, masculinity and turf in Israeli barbeques

Cultural anthropologist Nir Avieli will present Dickinson’s 2016 Pincus Lecture, “Power, Masculinity, and Turf in Israeli Barbeques,” on Thursday, April 14, at 6 p.m. in Stern Center Great Room.

Avieli will discuss the Israeli tradition of barbequing meat on the nation’s Independence Day. He argues the cookouts expose an ambivalent sense of power and weakness and of stability and flux, which underlies Israeli society. Food and power are areas of research that interest Avieli, who is compiling a “Culinary Ethnography of Israel.”

Avieli is a cultural anthropologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel who is interested in food and tourism. He has been conducting anthropological fieldwork in the central Vietnamese town of Hoi An since 1998. His book, Rice Talks: Food and Community in a Vietnamese Town, was published by Indiana University Press in 2012. He conducted further research in Thailand, India, Singapore and Israel. He is currently writing on Vietnamese gender and Vietnamese tourism.

The lecture is sponsored by Marjorie M. and Irwin Nat Pincus in honor of their daughters. It is co-sponsored by The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life.

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Published April 11, 2016