From Eggplant to Tomato: Reimagining Culinary Diffusion and Exchange in the Mediterranean

Anny Gaul will present, “From Eggplant to Tomato: Reimagining Culinary Diffusion and Exchange in the Mediterranean,” as part of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute long-term project, Foodways.

Lecture Description

Today, the fruits of certain edible nightshades, like eggplants and tomatoes, are associated with the cuisines of the Mediterranean region. Yet these now-ubiquitous ingredients were introduced to the sea's shores from far afield (the eggplant was first domesticated in Asia and the tomato in the Americas). This talk explains how they transformed over time from exotic oddities to beloved local staples. Their entangled histories reveal how trends we often associate with modern and industrialized cuisines may have much older roots. They also speak to the fragility of food as material for historical study, particularly for understudied or marginalized populations and the importance of telling Mediterranean stories that center Muslim, Jewish, and Arab perspectives rather than European imperial ones.

Anny Gaul

Anny Gaul is a cultural historian studying food and gender in the Maghrib & Mashriq. An assistant professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, she teaches classes on the culture, gender history, literature, and food of the Arabic-speaking world. Her book Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato was published in 2025 by the University of California Press.

Food, kitchens, and cookbooks are at the heart of her scholarship. Her research and writing begin with the premise that if we take culinary knowledge seriously in all its forms (written, oral, embodied) it can offer us new ways of understanding the world. Studying food and cooking teaches us about lived forms of culture that elude, refuse, and sometimes resist dominant narratives and categories we take for granted –– categories that tend to be foundational to how we understand ourselves and the communities to which we belong. She thinks of food as a starting point for writing cultural histories beyond the limitations of nationalist and colonial frameworks.

Louise W. and Edmund J. Kahn Liberal Arts Institute

The Kahn Institute supports collaborative research among Smith faculty, staff and students, Five College faculty, and visiting scholars—all without regard to the traditional boundaries of departments, programs and academic divisions. Each year the institute supports long- and short-term projects that are proposed, planned and organized by Smith College faculty. Kahn Fellows work together on topics that are broad enough to encompass a variety of disciplinary perspectives and fo­cused enough for a meaningful investigation.