28 Maggio 2026
A conference with Cindy Ott (University of Delaware), chair: Simone Cinotto - May 28 2026
This conference is based on Cindy Ott’s current book project about American Indians who have developed new strategies and collaborations, while drawing on deeply rooted food customs, and to not only survive, but thrive in the twentieth century.
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Indian’s core theme is “We survived!,” and the main point of the book is that Indians did so by figuring out how to make a living and what to make for dinner, and who to work, eat, and play with on a daily basis.
Ott will analyze a variety of source material – including grocery store receipts, food ration cards, and photographs – to explore local, day-to-day food-related activities and decisions on the reservation that have been as key to their survival, and their ability to thrive as their more headline-catching political activism and individual accomplishments off the reservation.
Cindy Ott is an associate professor of history and museum studies at the University of Delaware, and a guest professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy where she teaches an annual course about American Indian food and culture. Along with her book Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon (2012), she has published articles on food and society, landscape and memory, American Indian and white relations, and the practice of visual and material culture. She spent more than a decade of her career at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service.
The conference (in English) will be held in Aula Miroglio (Cascina Albertina, Pollenzo).
