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Food has long been central to all facets of Chinese society. In this talk, Professor Thomas David DuBois will start with the question of how cookbooks are a source to understand changing culinary fashions, historical commodity prices and household budgets, class aspirations around dining, and the changing social figure of the cook. Professor DuBois will then briefly bring these perspectives to China’s wealth of cookbooks before focusing the attention on technique, cuisine and authenticity by examining the evolution of particular dishes from the Song dynasty to the present day. The talk will close with a few thoughts on the tools and perspectives needed to conduct a genealogy of culinary craft.