In “Global Warning: Macrowaves on Stormy Restaurant Seas” Sonnenfeld will discuss globalization and multiculturalism (in a light-hearted, unjargonistic way, he promises!). Topics include restaurant names throughout the Western world, pizza as a uniquely American – not Italian – export, and the cultural values represented by McDonalds (28,000 franchises abroad and counting) and Starbucks proliferation (566 outlets not in North America).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Albert Sonnenfeld has degrees from Princeton University, where for 27 years he was professor of French and Comparative Literatures and longtime departmental chair. He moved to Los Angeles in 1986 to chair the department of French and Italian (for 12 years) at USC, during which time he held the M.F. Chevalier Professorship and won the prestigious Zumberge and Raubenheimer Awards. He retired in 2004.
Sonnenfeld directs the series Arts of the Table: Studies in Culinary History for Columbia University Press, where he has published Culture of the Fork (2001) and Food: A Culinary History (1999), Food is Culture (2006), and has in this series prefaced publications, A Cultural History of Italian Food; A History of Pasta; British Food and Hervé This’s Molecular Gastronomy, among others. More than thirty volumes have appeared in this distinguished series at Columbia.
Four times decorated by the French Republic, most recently as Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1993) and Chevalier dans l’Ordre du Mérite agricole (2006) he completed four terms on the National Board of Directors of The American Institute of Wine and Food. In 2002, he was named editor of The FCI Review by The French Culinary Institute of New York.

Free and open to the public.