CfP: Food Words and Stories - 1st issue of Meridian Critic, 2017

The first 2017 issue of the academic journal Meridian Critic invites scholarly articles that explore the universe of food, gastronomy and cuisine depicted by words, images and texts.
Both food and the lack of food determine the course of human actions and define man’s inner structure. Our food preferences manifest themselves through numerous consumption practices that are rooted in cultural beliefs and traditions specific to certain times and geographic areas. As a culinary strategy, the consumption of food constantly reorganizes man’s symbolic universe and constructs identities. Besides the numerous identity markers accompanying our consumption decisions, our food choices often trigger numerous interpretations that may range from patriotic statements to forms of social protest. The preparation of food influences the innermost part of human society; food is a complex cultural product that reflects social hierarchies, gender relationships, as well as rural, urban, national and planetary gastro-identity landscapes. Besides its nutritional values, food is loaded with biases and stereotypes generated by the consumers who try to make sense of the world around them. The oscillation between excess and simplicity, between artifice and authenticity is typical of today’s culinary scene.
Food consumption may be looked at from a variety of angles proposed by literature, language and cultural studies. Lines of interest such as the following (but not only) may be explored:
  • the imaginary of food, cooking and gastronomy;
  • culinary spaces and gourmand discourse;
  • globalization, McDonaldization and food imperialism;
  • manifestations of culinary syncretism;
  • the memory of taste and culinary nostalgia;
  • food consumption and the construction of identities;
  • urban and rural gastro-identity landscapes;
  • the discourse of phobias and cravings;
  • the discourse of cornucopia and scarcity;
  • narratives of hunger, famine and starvation;
  • food, gender and race;
  • tradition and innovation in culinary and gastronomy terminologies;;
  • the semantics of gastronomy lexis;
  • food categories and their projection in the imaginary of phrases and idioms;
  • the linguistic repertoire of food ecology;
  • culinary jargon.


 Deadline for article submission: April 15th, 2017. We welcome papers in English, French, German, and Romanian. Please send the abstracts (ca 200 words), the full paper (up to 7000 words), as well as a brief biographical note (ca 400 words) to the following address: evelina.graur@usv.ro

 For details regarding style, please visit the following page: http://meridiancritic.usv.ro/index.php?page=instructions-to-authors

 We also welcome book-length studies in the field of literature and linguistics, published in 2016, to be reviewed in our journal. Please send the books to the following address: Meridian critic, Facultatea de Litere şi Ştiinţe ale Comunicării, Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” Suceava, Str. Universităţii nr. 13, 720229 Suceava, Romania