Garret Hillyer presented on the topic “E tuai, tuai, ta te ma’ona ai: Approaching a food history of Samoa”, as part of the CSS Seminar and Film Series on 3rd October 2019 at the National University of Samoa.
According to Garret Hillyer “Though it is easy to see that food is and has been, central to the Fa’asamoa since aso anamua, and that the relationship between food and the Fa’asamoa has changed over time, it si not as easy to articulate this centrality and these changes within an academic framework. This presentation engages with theoretical and methodological approaches to both Food History and Pacific History, exploring the ways in which borrowing from both historiographies can help articulate a food history of Samoa…”
Garret Hillyer is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow focussing on Samoan language and area studies, as well as a John. F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow in History and a student affiliate of the East=West Center in Honolulu. He is currently in the early stages of his dissertation research on Samoa’s food history.
