Appetites: Discourses of Consumption
20th Annual CLIFF Conference
March 10-12, 2016
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Keynote: “A Tale of Deliveries”
Rey Chow, Duke University
Thursday, March 10, 2015 at 5:00pm
Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: Dec 15, 2015.
Over the past twenty years, the rise of food studies has brought the culinary to the attention of academics, particularly among social scientists and in departments of cultural studies. This brings new valence to widely circulated notions of cultural and material consumption and their affective dimensions (e.g. desires, appetites). Building on foundational work by scholars including Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes, researchers have added food to the ever-growing list of cultural products deserving of inquiry. This relatively new concern with food opens up the possibility of thinking consumption and appetites in broader terms. How do we consume bodies, images, and cultures? How can the humanities engage with food studies? Is it possible to think the consumption of food alongside other forms of consumption?
This conference, aimed at graduate students in all disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, is concerned with appetite and consumption in all their varied aspects. We welcome proposals that address:
- Food
- Sex and the body
- Historical and new materialisms
- Visual culture and new media
- Travel and tourism
- Translation and the circulation of culture
- Commodities and commodification
- Orality and language
Graduate students may submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by December 15, 2015 via email to cliffumich2016@gmail.com. Partial reimbursements will be available to assist with the cost of international travel.