Critical Studies in Food and Culture

Wine Culture in the Transnational World

Call for Presentations:
Panel: Wine Culture in the Transnational World

I am assembling a panel on wine culture and globalization for the Foodways, Diasporic Diners, Transnational, Tables, and Culinary Connections Conference to be held in Toronto, Thursday October 4 - Sunday, October 7, 2012. This is the annual conference of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. http://www.utoronto.ca/cdts/

I am interested in showcasing work that introduces critical concepts to the study of wine culture and society. How is our understanding of the wine trade, wine aesthetics, wine science, or wine geography developed by the interventions of cultural studies, feminism, critical race theory or other variations of critical theory? And what can the social and cultural study of wine, its changing forms, networks and practices, reveal about processes and structures of contemporary social life?

A few potential topics:
Navigating wine’s local and global networks
Changing technologies and traditions,
The labor processes and structure of expertise of global wine
Consumer behavior, status and class,
The performance of taste and power across cultures
New wine communities / wine and development
The ecologies of the wine industry and wine tourism
Global semiotics of wine markets
The cultural and political economies of good taste

See the conference call for papers for more ideas:
http://www.utoronto.ca/cdts/pdf_doc/Food%20conference.pdf

My own contribution to the panel examines the social importance of wine in consumer society by historicizing its promise and appeal in relation to the crises which accompany globalization.

Please send titles, abstracts (200 words), and contact information to me by March 1, 2012

Send to:
David Michalski
University of California, Davis
michalski@ucdavis.edu