Special Event: Book Launch | Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India

Date: 

Monday, September 24, 2018, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262)

Image of Hungry Nation book coverThis ambitious new account details independent India’s struggle to overcome famine and malnutrition in the twentieth century. Siegel explains the historical origins of contemporary India’s malnutrition epidemic, showing how food and sustenance moved to the center of nationalist thought in the final years of colonial rule. Hungry Nation interrogates how citizens and politicians contested the meanings of nation building and citizenship through food, and how these contestations receded in the wake of the Green Revolution. This is the story of how Indians challenged meanings of welfare and citizenship across class, caste, region, and gender in a new nation-state.

Speaker:

Benjamin Siegel, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Boston University. Graduate Fellow (2013–2014), The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. 

Commentators:

Prakash Kumar, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, Department of History, Penn State University.

Rachel Berger, Associate Professor of History; Fellow, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University.

Chair:

Sunil Amrith, Director, Center for History and Economics; Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies; Chair, Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University.

Contact:

Bruce Jackan
bjackan@wcfia.harvard.edu