The lecture Flavors, power, and memory: menus as historical documents. It is part of the 2026 programming of the cycle. Meeting with Research, This initiative, from the Museu Paulista of USP (University of São Paulo), proposes a reflection on the history of food using menus as documentary sources, exploring their relationships with cultural practices, sociability, power, and memory in different historical contexts.
The presentation is based on research developed by Eliane Morelli Abrahão During her postdoctoral research at the Museu Paulista of USP, between 2017 and 2022, she focused on the menus collected by Washington Luís, the last president of the Old Republic, whose iconographic collection is part of the holdings of the Museu Republicano de Itu, one of the locations of the Museu Paulista. These documents allow us to analyze food not only as a daily practice, but as a central element of material culture, revealing social values, symbolic distinctions, hierarchies, and forms of representation associated with public and private life.
By approaching menus as objects of study, the lecture discusses the processes of building historical collections, the choices involved in document preservation, and the interpretative potential of these materials in a history museum. The analysis articulates themes such as uses and customs, food practices, aesthetics, power, and memory, highlighting the role of food in the construction of identities and historical narratives.
The reflection also engages with the curatorial experience of the exhibition. Menus from the Washington Luís collection in the archives of the Republican Museum “Convention of Itu” – USP, inaugurated in 2019, of which the researcher was co-curator, highlighting the challenges of communicating this type of collection to the public and of inserting the material culture of food into the historiographical debate.
Eliane Morelli Abrahão is a historian, with a degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), a master's degree in Cultural History, and a doctorate in Politics, Memory, and the City, both from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). She works as the historian responsible for the Historical Archives of the Center for Logic, Epistemology, and History of Science (CLE-Unicamp) and as a volunteer professor in the History Program at the same institution. Her research focuses on the fields of food history, material culture, documentary preservation, customs and traditions, and the history of science, integrating national and international research groups dedicated to the subject.
This meeting is part of the second year of the "Encounter with Research" cycle, which promotes periodic meetings between researchers and the public, sharing research developed from the collections of the Museu Paulista at USP and reflecting on the role of research in the construction of historical narratives.
In-person lecture
Date:March 21, 2026 (Saturday)
Time: 2 PM
Workload: 4h
Job openings: 200
Location: Auditorium of the Ipiranga Museum
Accessibility: Pounds
Free registration: from 2/24 to 3/15 in this link
