Critical Studies in Food and Culture

Please join us for the annual meeting and joint conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS)

This year's theme:

Place, Taste, and Sustenance: The Social Spaces of Food and Agriculture

Wednesday, June 7, 2006 Sunday, June 11, 2006
hosted by Boston University's Programs in Gastronomy
Boston, Massachusetts

Boston University's Programs in Gastronomy (MLA in Gastronomy, Culinary Arts Certificate Program, Elizabeth Bishop Wine Program), with great enthusiasm, looks forward to hosting this year's annual conference.

The location for this year's conference sets itself as an ideal locale for the meeting =96 Boston is a vibrant city that, with a concentration of leading universities and libraries, promotes intellectual pursuits and thoughtful dialogue; a city that boasts a tradition of gustatory pleasures, from the oldest continuously running restaurant (The Oyster House) to the home of Culinary leaders that include Julia Child, Jasper White, Gordon Hamersely and Lydia Shire; it also has a strong history of public markets (Haymarket), community activism centering on food, issues of sustainability of land and sea and farm-to-table initiatives.

Potential tours include:
*A Day at Westport, Massachusetts
We will visit organic farms, farmers markets, learn about the history of local farming. We will also tour Westport Rivers and Winery, to taste their wine, learn about cool climate viticulture and lunch at Long Acre Restaurant, on the grounds of the winery, which specializes in local produce and seafood.

*A morning sail on the Schooner Ernestina. We will sail around Boston Harbor on this former cod fishing boat first launched in 1894. During the trip, learn about the history of cod-fishing and lunch on traditional dishes aboard the ship.

*Artisinal Cheese Tasting
Ihsan Gurdal, cheese maturer and cheese monger, will guide us through the world of artisan cheeses. Drawing from his years of experience ripening and selling farmhouse cheeses, he will discuss traditional methods of cheese making and the craft of affinage. We will taste samples, paired with wines and condiments.

*Walking Tour of the North

We will take a half-day tour of ethnic enclave North End (Italian). The North End is Boston's first neighborhood and home to a number of successive immigrant groups Irish, Portuguese, Jewish and Italian. The historic quarter is home to Paul Revere's house, the first public schoolhouse, the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea") and the victim of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. Our guides will lead the group to grocery stores, bakeries, and wine stores, followed by lunch prepared at an award-winning restaurant.

*Tour of sustainable urban farming with The Food Project
On this tour, we will visit Boston's urban farming, led by The Food Project, a community organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture and food access. In addition, we will visit ReVision House, a transitional shelter for women and children that promotes healthy eating with hydroponic and aquaponic foods raised on the grounds and offers classes in meal preparation.

Accommodation ranges in price and amenities, from dorm suites (individual rooms en suite) in the new Boston University Student Village to luxury rooms in the Hotel Commonwealth.

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS FOR SESSIONS

The joint annual meeting of the Association for the Study of food and Society (ASFS) and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFSVS) brings together two multidisciplinary professional and scholarly societies for the purpose of broadly discussing contemporary issues relating to food production, distribution, and consumption and the history, philosophy, social institutions and values which underlie them. Papers and panels are sought on any topic related to agriculture, food, and society, including but not limited to the following:

*How place influences food cultivation and consumption
*Sustainability, accessibility, and availability of foods
*The convergence of sense and aesthetics in the construction of taste
*Philosophical and ethical issues in agriculture, food, cooking and eating systems
*Local vs. global food issues and policy
*Food access, food security, food safety, food equity, and food ethics
*Food- and agriculture-related social movements
*The politics of terroir and place-named foods
*The cultural contexts of food, consumption, and body issues
*Historical and cross-national analyses of food-related issues

Procedures for Submitting Abstracts of Contributed Papers and Proposals for Sessions

1. Abstracts of contributed papers and proposed sessions and roundtables are due February 10, 2006. Late papers will be considered only on a space-available basis. Abstracts of contributed papers should be 250 words or fewer. Proposals for sessions and roundtables should also include an abstract (250 words) describing the session's content. (Sessions are composed of three formal paper presentations with moderator-led discussions . Roundtables are informal presentations with more emphasis on discussion.)

2. Please send abstract as an attached WORD file (NO EMBEDDED CODES) to gastrmla@bu.edu. Include your name, full mailing address, email address and affiliation after the paper title and before the text of the abstract. Proposals for sessions, panels, and other events should include the name, affiliation, and address of the organizer and presider, and a tentative roster of participants.
3. If you have questions about the program or submitted a proposal, please contact: Beth Forrest, Programs in Gastronomy, Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617.353.9853 Fax: 617.353.4130 Email: bforrest@bu.edu

Subject: ASFS STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION

GUIDELINES FOR THE ASFS STUDENT PAPER AWARD SUBMISSION

The ASFS invites undergraduate and graduate to submit a paper for the William Whit (undergraduate) and Alex McIntosh (graduate) prizes. These awards are intended to recognize students' contributions to the field of food studies. One award will be given for an undergraduate student paper and one award for a graduate student paper. The author of each award-winning paper will receive $400, payment of membership and conference fees and a free banquet ticket for the coming year's annual meeting.

We welcomes submissions on a wide range of issues relating to food, society and culture, and from the diverse disciplinary (and transdisciplinary) fields that ASFS encompasses.


Format Guidelines
All papers must be double-spaced and include references and bibliographic information. Paper should follow APA or MLA guidelines for style and format.Papers can be no longer than 5000 words, excluding references and no0tes. Provide a word count at the end of the paper.

Use a serif font (such as Palatino, Times, Times New Roman, or Century Schoolbook). Do not use a sans serif font (such as Arial, Geneva, or Verdana). Use a 12 point font size. Use only the left justification.

Submission Guidelines and Conditions of Award
Videos and other non-print formats are not eligible for consideration at this time.
Only single-authored papers will be considered.
Papers submitted to ASFS cannot be submitted to AFHVS (and vice versa). ASFS reserves the right to refer papers to AFHVS.
The paper should have been completed within two years prior to submission date. The paper should have been written during a course or research project directed by a faculty member at an academic institution or research institute.

Papers will not be considered without a letter or email from the primary supervising professor, testifying to single-handed authorship and
veracity of information and data.

All entries must include a completed submission cover sheet (see attached).
Papers must be submitted electronically (along with letter of verification and submission sheet) to the address listed below. Papers with incomplete or late paperwork will not be considered. The committee reserves the right to reject a paper on the grounds that it does not fit the criteria specified. The committee also reserves the right to select an outside reader in particular areas of expertise.

Authors are encouraged to simultaneously submit an abstract to the ASFS/AFHVS conference by the conference deadline. Prizewinning papers may be presented at an ASFS/AFHVS conference within two years of award.

Prizewinners may also postpone their registration and banquet ticket use for one year following the award.


Process:
Please submit an electronic version of the paper, which does not include personally identifying information, along with the submission cover sheet and electronic letter from the primary supervising professor to:

Ms. Angie Maltby
aam2@post.queensu.ca

Angie will keep track of the identifying information, but will ensure that anonymous copies of the paper are sent to the Adjudication Committee.

Deadline for Submission: MARCH 15TH, 2006


For more information, please contact the Adjudication Committee Chair, Dr. Elaine Power, power@post.queensu.ca

Founding Food Studies: Emerging Work on Food Practices and Cultures at UC Davis

This one-day conference, planned for May 3, 2006, is for graduate students at UC Davis currently working towards dissertations in what could loosely be termed "food studies." We invite participants from a variety of fields including, but not limited to, cultural studies, sociology, education, nutrition, history, comparative literatures & English, anthropology, geography, community and regional development, and food science and technology. We are interested particularly in projects that examine how food (as material and/or metaphor, as chosen, denied, and/or imposed) impacts values, bodies, communities, histories, and definitions of the "normal" or "natural."

Founding Food Studies will feature formal papers and informal roundtable discussions. All will be directed towards the primary goal of bringing together the disparate projects currently underway on campus and brainstorming whether an interdisciplinary concentration in food studies should emerge and what it might look like.

All proposals, either for formal papers or roundtable discussions, should be in the form of 500 word abstracts. We welcome individual paper proposals or "session" proposals clustered around common themes.

Please send abstracts and brief CVs for all proposed participants to either Kimberly Nettles, Women and Gender Studies, kdnettles@ucdavis.edu or Carolyn de la Peña, American Studies, ctdelapena@ucdavis.edu no later than February 15, 2006. We will announce conference participants by early March.

Date Submitted: 2005-12-14
EATING OUT: FOOD AND THE PERFORMANCE OF TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY

I am looking for co-presenters for an alternative session that I am proposing for the upcoming American Studies Association conference, which will take place in Oakland, California October 12-15, 2006. The theme for the 2006 ASA conference is “The United States from Inside and Out: Transnational American Studies.”

The session that I am proposing, "Eating Out: Food and the Performance of Transnational Identity" will focus upon the relationship between so-called “ethnic" food and transnational identity in America. Performance Studies approaches tend to support a theorization of food as being perceived acted upon and located in what Paul Connerton would describe as a “system of expectations.” According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, to perform is to do, to behave, to show. Food evokes a certain level of preconception, and does something to the consumer. What does food do in transnational American cultural life? The goal of this session is to explore this very issue.

Keying in on the more evocative and dynamic qualities of food, I would invite performance or workshop oriented proposals that consider a delectable buffet of ethnographic works, performances, gastronomic literature, art, films and/or television programs. Of special interest will be how food and foodways as cultural performances sustain, subvert, bind or bound various immigrant communities within American society.

Drawing from Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s theory of food as a performance medium, and Dwight Conquergood’s theory of dialogical performance, for my own presentation I will discuss and perform short excerpts from several texts in conversation with each other as a way of debunking the myth of the American Melting Pot. Focusing upon reviews of Iberian and Latin American restaurants in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, I will draw attention to how articulations (and misrepresentations) of Newark’s urban decline and renewal, coupled with popular discourses around the Ironbound’s thriving food culture construct the neighborhood as a bounded ethnic utopia, spatially and discursively separate from the city’s notorious legacy of post-industrial failure, political corruption, crime and racial violence enacted across a highly polarized Black-White divide.

Alternative sessions are essentially sessions without papers, and would include performances, workshops, multimedia presentations and dialogues. For a more detailed description of alternative sessions, please visit the ASA website: http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/AmericanStudiesAssn/annualmeeting/ASA2006/cfp2006.htm.

Artists, foodies, and graduate students are especially encouraged to submit a proposal.

Please email a brief (250 word) proposal and 1 page cv to l-baptista@northwestern.edu if you are interested in joining this session NO LATER THAN January 10, 2005.
Lori Barcliff Baptista
Department of Performance Studies
Northwestern University
1920 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208-2240
847-491-3171
Email: l-baptista@northwestern.edu