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University of Washington

Cultural Translations: A Global history of the chili pepper in Architecture

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The chili pepper came to occupy global cuisine in variegated ways through performative negotiations of cultural differences. From the Inca royal garden, Moyas, a locus of power where doves feed on chilies to the swidden farms of the Carribean in which the chili grows wild; from the formalized pleasure gardens where it sits among cyclamens and tulips in Europe at the dawn of early modernity to the battle fields of Hungary-Ottoman frontier; from colonial plantations of the Portuguese bordering the Indian west coast to the royal miniature paintings of the Mughal court; from the domestic gardens of the poor to the banqueting spectacles of the British colonists; through space and time, the chili pepper is betwixt and between: history and folklore, human and non-human, the colonized and the colonizer. This thesis unfolds this global history of architecture as activated through continuous cultural translations of the chili pepper across discontinuous geographies. In the process this thesis suggests of the tacit ways in which food and architecture materialize each other.

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Bathala, Deepthi
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Prakash, Vikramaditya

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • none
Language dc:language.iso
en_US

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1773/43853
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:digital.lib.washington.edu:1773/43853

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Washington
Base URL
digital.lib.washington.edu/server/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Bathala, Deepthi. Cultural Translations: A Global history of the chili pepper in Architecture. 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/43853