Date: Thursday 29 May 2025
Time: 18.30 to 20.00
Location: Uí Chadhain Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
Free and open to the public.
Why do we connect indulging in food - from chocolate-covered strawberries to oysters on the half shell - with sexual appetites? What bit of human anatomy did the French believe resembled a crawfish? In this talk, acclaimed historian Rachel Hope Cleves draws from her latest book, Lustful Appetites, to explore these longstanding carnal and culinary connections. Join us on an international gastronomic journey--from 19th century Paris and London to 20th century New York and San Francisco—as we explore where our narratives around gastronomic and sexual appetites come from, and how these histories impact us today.
Rachel Hope Cleves is a Professor of History at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada). She is the author of four award-winning works: Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex (2024), Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality (2020), Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (2014), and The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (2009).
This event is sponsored by the Trinity Centre for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and information on the centre is available here.
For further information on this event please email Dr Gillian Frank, Director of the Centre for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, at <FRANKG@tcd.ie>.
