Images from the gastronomic world. Society and culture explained through the illustrations of food and its environment (Tours)

Images related to the world of gastronomic culture can bring interesting information about various aspects related to society, showing how such culture differed according to the period, and to the historical and geographical context. This particular category of visual sources can thus provide a fundamental means for interdisciplinary research by helping scholars not only to better understand certain aspects of documentary sources and material culture that would otherwise remain partially obscure, providing complementary information to descriptions found in chronicles, letters, recipes or festival books, but also to explain the function, form and decorative motifs of a range of objects related to table culture. Illustrations related to the world of gastronomy obviously offer the possibility of exploring eating habits and the ingredients used, but also some forms of diversion, the table setting and layout, the tableware used, the distribution of sits at the table at banquets, the relative decorative choices of the halls in which banquets were organized, or, in the case of more modest social environments, the living conditions and access to certain foods by different layers of the population. The study of such images is therefore of interest not only to art historians, food historians or those interested in material cultures, but also to archaeologists, experts in botany, social history, diplomacy, production techniques or etiquette.

The organizers of this workshop (Maddalena Bellavitis, Loïc Bienassis and Milan Svoboda) invite papers that address issues that can shed new light and provide new interdisciplinary research trajectories on any topic that can be connected with the study of illustrations and representations of banquets and gastronomy during the centuries, from antiquity to the 19th century.

To be considered for participation, please provide a single pdf document including a one-page proposal for a 20-minute presentation of unpublished work and a short bio. Presentations will be in French and English. Applications may be sent to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by October 15, 2023, specifying in the object the title of the workshop you are applying for (participants will be notified at the end of October).