We recently received this call for papers for a graduate student conference that should be of interest to our members or their students. At the very end of this CFP there is a note about the Graduate Association for Food Studies that ought to interest any graduate student with interests in food.
Call For Papers
The 2nd Annual
Future of Food Studies Graduate Conference
St. Louis — October 19-21, 2017
presented by the Graduate Association for Food Studies with major funding from
The Association for the Study of Food and Society and
Washington University in St. Louis
The Future of Food Studies
The Graduate Association for Food Studies is pleased to announce the second annual Future of Food Studies graduate student conference, to be held 19-21 October 2017, at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The keynote speaker will be Professor Krishnendu Ray, acclaimed food studies scholar and chair of the Food Studies department at New York University. Additionally, a select number of student papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the Graduate Journal of Food Studies, an open-source, peer-reviewed graduate journal that publishes food-related research. Learn more about our 2015 conference at Harvard University here.
Below you will find the Call for Papers; please feel free to distribute to any and all graduate students who you think may be interested.
Thanks to generous funding from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and Washington University, modest support may be available in some cases to partially subsidize travel expenses of some conference participants, with priority granted to those traveling from afar.
For proposal/abstract guidelines, a provisional schedule, and further details, please visit the conference website.
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Food studies has arrived. It is hard to imagine that two decades ago, scholars seriously considered food only in a few disciplines, usually at the margins. As food studies has exploded across disciplines, the field now boasts its own professional associations, journals, and undergraduate and graduate programs at institutions around the world. In addition, the past decade has seen a surge of public interest in food, from food trucks to urban farming to The Hunger Games—even as food security remains unattainable or elusive for billions of people. Food has never been more relevant to academic inquiry.
As food studies has risen to prominence, scholars have emphasized that we can use food as a lens to examine nearly any topic. Yet it is clear that food studies must grapple with many questions, including questions about the field’s own identity. With food studies becoming increasingly institutionalized, how will the discipline continue to evolve? What new subjects, methods, or theories will reshape the study of food in coming years? What areas of food culture and politics urgently need academic attention? And how can the discipline stay relevant when public interest in food inevitably wanes? Emerging scholars at the forefront of the discipline offer exciting answers to these questions.
This conference seeks graduate scholarship that presents original approaches to food studies, whether applying creative theories and methods to established questions or subjects, or interrogating unconsidered topics in novel ways. As a fundamentally interdisciplinary subject of study, we welcome papers from the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, english, cultural studies, american studies, gender studies, economics, art, politics, pedagogy, nutrition, philosophy, and religion, as well as other disciplines. We expect to assemble graduate students from an array of disciplines and a broad geographic expanse.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
· the ethics of terroir and sustainability;
· agriculture and agrarian change in the Anthropocene;
· medicinal or ‘drug’ foods across history;
· innovation across the food system;
· food and the body;
· food sovereignty and food insecurity;
· the politics of public health and nutrition;
· emergent culinary diaspora(s);
· food and value;
· food, identity, and authenticity;
· food, media, and representation ;
· food, eating, and race;
· food, agriculture, and empire;
· food history.
Proposals (papers or full panels) should be submitted by June 15, 2017, and must include an abstract (250 words) of the paper to be presented and a brief biographical statement (100 words).
For thematic continuity, we strongly encourage proposals for pre-organized panels of up to three presentations. For panels, each speaker must send their own abstract, and indicate the names of the other speakers with whom they will share the panel at the bottom of their abstract. Panel proposals without all three speakers’ individual proposals submitted will not be accepted. Only proposals from graduate students will be considered. Select papers will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies.
See the conference website for more details and to submit an abstract.
Deadline for proposals: June 15, 2017
ABOUT THE GAFS
The Graduate Association for Food Studies (GAFS) is an interdisciplinary academic community founded in the spring of 2014 with the goals of connecting graduate students interested in food and promoting their exceptional work. The Association publishes the digital Graduate Journal of Food Studies and hosts the Future of Food Studies conference for graduate students to present, discuss, and network. Our first Conference took place in 2015 at Harvard University with an upcoming conference at Washington University in St. Louis in October 2017. We are the official graduate student caucus of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS).
Rooted in a network of senior graduate students pursuing food studies scholarship in a rigorous fashion, the Graduate Association for Food Studies provides peer-to-peer advice, support, and professional development. Join the GAFS to build your CV as well as your knowledge of the pragmatics of peer review, editing, book reviews, and publishing—and meet other grad students interested in food studies, from all over the world.
FoodAnthropology 