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