Join us for a lecture by Nancy Siegel, professor of art history and culinary history at Towson University. This is the second annual lecture sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

From the late 18th through the early decades of the 19th century, recipes linking food to politics—with names such as Election Cake, Independence Cake, Democratic Tea Cakes, and Liberty Tea—became increasingly popular as a means to communicate caution or approval regarding the state of affairs in the United States. Women, in particular, became culinary activists who authored cookbooks in praise of the new and fragile nation; they provided a platform for promoting democratic ideals and engraining them in the public consciousness more powerfully than presidential addresses or ratified documents ever could.

Join us after the talk for a reception featuring Election Cake and Liberty Tea!

For more information, please contact: Jacki Musacchio, jmusacch@wellesley.edu.

Image Credit: American Antiquarian Society
Image Caption: Container of tea from the Boston Tea Party