Critical Studies in Food and Culture

Call for Proposals for a collection
Women and Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950
Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, editors

Although the body is both object (for others) and a lived reality (for
the subject), it is never simply object nor simply subject. It is
defined by its relation with objects and in turn defines these objects
as such.
--Maurice Merleau-Ponty

We invite proposals for essays for a collection titled _Women and
Things: Material Culture, 1750-1950_. This collection invites scholars
to consider women's engagement with the material world, from the most
ordinary, mundane daily practices and objects to the most
extraordinary, life-altering practices and objects, over the
two-hundred-year period of 1750 to1950.

Since material culture encompasses all human-made objects, the
possibility of topics is wide open so long as they connect women to
things. Therefore, topics might include, but are certainly not limited
to: fiber arts (needlework, quilting, knitting, crocheting);
decorative arts; other kinds of crafts; painting; sculpture;
scrapbooks; albums; china; porcelain; architecture; interior design;
landscape and
gardening; shopping; clothing; fashion; and food. The focus might be
on all or part of the life-cycle of an object, from design, to
production, to circulation, to consumption, to commodification, to
valuation, to collection and display.

Although scholars in anthropology, museum studies, and decorative arts
have long taken material culture as their focus, in the past twenty
years scholars from other disciplines that have traditionally been
more text-centric have increasingly turned their attention to material
objects in what might be termed the material turn. This edited
collection is designed to serve those scholars. We look forward then
to
proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not
limited to, cultural studies, history, literature, rhetoric and
composition, art, art history and art theory, communication studies,
visual design, race studies, and women's studies. We encourage and
wish to present multiple theoretical frames and methodologies that
grapple with questions concerning women and material things.

Please send your 250-500-word proposal and a CV as electronic
attachments in MS-word or RTF format to Beth Fowkes Tobin
and Maureen Daly Goggin <
maureen.goggin@asu.edu> ) by March 30, 2007.

Beth Fowkes Tobin
Maureen Goggin
Arizona State University