No tea parties in Boston as PhD student focuses on cordon bleu chef
Published on 09 May, 2012
PhD candidate Jillian Adams recently represented CQUniversity's School of Creative and Performing Arts in Boston USA, thanks to her interest in celebrity chefs.
Her paper - Dione Lucas Down Under - which explored the 1956 visit of American celebrity cordon bleu chef and TV cookery demonstrator Dione Lucas, and her place in the launch of televison in Australia, was accepted into a prestigious international conference held during April.
PhD candidate Jillian Adams examines a Dione Lucas cookbook
The paper was selected for the Australasian stream of the US Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) conference.
The PCA/ACA offers a venue for scholars and enthusiasts who study popular culture to come together and share ideas and interests about the field or about a particular subject within the field. The Australasian stream tends to investigate links between American and Australasian culture, both contemporary and historical.
While in Boston, Jillian took the opportunity to access the Dione Lucas Archive in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. The library's principal holdings date from the founding of the United States to the present and are especially rich in the areas of women's rights movements, feminism, health, social reform, education, professional life, volunteer and civic efforts, family relationships, and travel.
Personal documents such as diaries and letters provide fascinating insights into the ordinary lives of women of all ages and pursuits and record the struggles and triumphs of women of accomplishment.
The Library holds one of the world's most important collections of historical cookbooks - over 20,000 volumes from around the world: It also holds the papers of important culinary figures including Julia and Paul Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, and Dione Lucas.
From 1940 to 1970 Dione Lucas ran successful restaurants and cookery schools in New York. She also had a very popular cooking show on television from 1948, published cookery books and contributed food articles and recipes to popular magazines. On a brief stopover in New York City, Jillian located the sites where Lucas' schools and restaurants had operated.