It feels like it’s in my blood to study legumes. My mom is a soy historian; that just ended up being the niche she fell into. I’ve always been surrounded by this idea that food is significant, food is powerful.

My first semester we were at home because of COVID and I took a first-year seminar about the role of art in diplomacy. I focused on culinary art and came across the Hummus Wars. 

In the 2010s, Israel and Lebanon had this kind of war over who could have the largest plate of hummus in the Guinness Book of World Records. There was the whole aspect of Israel making more money on the international hummus market, and the Association of Lebanese Industrialists wanted to get a license for the word hummus, so that no country would be able to call it “hummus” except for Lebanon. There were these feelings that Israel had culturally appropriated hummus. I learned so many stories of Jewish settlers who used hummus and other Arab foods as a way of establishing themselves as, “This is our land, we do belong here, we’ve always been here.” So there was this kind of invention of tradition. I became very interested in all of that for my paper.