Foods and people from places as far away as Nepal and as close as Cincinnati were brought together during the history department’s “Food Past, Food Future” event on Monday, March 4.

Greta Rensenbrink, chair of the history department, said she was shocked by the amount of students interested in learning about different cultures.

“I’ve been amazed how, especially when we have some times when we have more educational stuff, students are so interested in asking questions and really wanting to learn and understand something about food,” Rensenbrink said.

History professor Chris White said the event serves as a reminder to students and faculty that they can partake in meals from different cultures.

“We like to remind students and faculty that we can eat across cultural barriers, what have you, so we can break those down,” White said.

The event, in its fifth iteration, started due to the history department’s desire to feed students.

“It started because we wanted to do an event where we fed students,” Rensenbrink said. “And the first year we did, it was history faculty and history graduate students.”

Rensenbrink said the event started with foods of the past and imagined foods of the future.

“The first year we did literally ‘food past, food future,’ and we had historical food, and then we had sort of imagined future food, like, for instance, cricket tacos was on the menu,” Rensenbrink said.

“Chris White made those – very frightening,” Rensenbrink said. “I ate one, I was almost sick afterward just from the idea of it.”

She said the theme changes every year, but it is always educational.

“Ever since then, we do a different theme, educational and just partly food and just fun,” Rensenbrink said.

White said the event serves as a way to bridge the gaps between different departments on campus.

“Students and faculty and staff can meet with each other and break bread in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t because of the separation of all the different departments across campus,” White said.

White said the department wanted to increase the frequency of the event from once per year to once per semester.

“This time, we wanted to increase the frequency to twice a year, so we usually have it in the fall and now we’re going to start having it in the fall and in the spring because it’s a really fun event to bring people together,” White said.

Rensenbrink said her favorite dishes were the Sicilian S cookies and a chicken casserole with yogurt on the side.

White, on the other hand, said he enjoyed the variety of dishes he tried.

“I don’t know what my favoritething is. I’m just sampling one at a time, and they all taste great together,” White said. “We’ve got a dish from Spain, we have a dish from Cameroon, we have a dish from Nepal, from India, from Mexico, Nicaragua, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Palestine, so they’re all good – it’s all good together.”