Less than a century ago, hummus and other Palestinian staples were often met with disinterest and sometimes outright rejection among Zionist settlers. Yet for modern-day Israelis, hummus has become a dish that is both everyday and iconic, intertwined with cultural perceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and masculinity.

Rather than regard culinary appropriation as a necessary outcome of land colonization, Dafna Hirsch instead examines how changing gastronomic, economic, and political factors intersected with material and cultural production in a multilayered colonial context.

In her book, Hirsch shows how the Arab identity of hummus functions as a semiotic resource, which is sometimes suppressed and at other times leveraged to lend authenticity to hummus - and thus to its consumers.

About the speaker

Dafna Hirsch is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, the Open University of Israel. She is author of "We Are Here to Bring the West": Hygiene Education and Nation Building in the Jewish Society of Mandate Palestine and editor of Entangled Histories in Palestine/Israel: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives.