Award-Winning Author to Speak at ATU November 6

Dr. Ai Hisano, senior lecturer at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Economics in Japan, will speak at Arkansas Tech University on Wednesday, Nov. 6, as part of the ATU Interdisciplinary Research Series.

The presentation will begin at 6 p.m. in Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center room 300A, 305 West Q Street in Russellville. Admission will be free and open to the public. A reception with light refreshments will begin at 5:30 p.m.

Her lecture will be based on her 2019 book from Harvard University Press entitled “Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat.”

Hisano has studied the evolution of consumer perceptions over the past century concerning how food should look. During her remarks on Nov. 6, she will discuss how a variety of production, regulation and marketing influences have changed the interpretation of what is natural and fresh food.

A former Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Harvard Business School, Hisano earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree in history from the University of Delaware in 2016. She captured the 2017 Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize and the 2017 Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools’ dissertation award in recognition of her dissertation, “Eye Appeal is Buy Appeal: Business Creates the Color of Foods, 1870-1970.”

Hisano holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American studies from the University of Tokyo in Japan.

Learn more about the ATU Interdisciplinary Research Series at www.atu.edu/irs.