The history, philosophy and religious studies department’s October colloquium will feature Jeff Johnson's presentation, "On Defining Authentic Food." It is scheduled for Oct. 14 at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Union's Hidatsa room.

Johnson said attendees may be tempted to tackle the question of food authenticity by appealing to the relations a dish bears to some original version, to the particular ingredients of a dish or to the relations the making of a dish bears to the culinary practices of a particular group. (Lisa Heldke calls versions of these responses the “nativity” account, “replicability” account and “adaptability” account, respectively). Johnson will begin with a characterization of each of these different responses. He argues that each of these responses comes up short in settling the question about what makes food authentic. He then shows these responses share the assumption that talk of authenticity functions primarily as a description.

Johnson earned his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Minnesota and is an assistant professor at Saint Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn. He works on issues in the philosophy of language and in the philosophy of perception, though he has lately been interested in issues related to the philosophy of food. In addition to his work on the notion of authentic food, he has been thinking about the ethics of eating animals, the ethics of industrial agriculture and about food security issues. His work is heavily influenced by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin.

Special needs requests or questions can be directed to Dennis Cooley at dennis.cooley@ndsu.edu or 1-7038.