Call for Papers

"Love and Food"

2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television

November 10-14, 2010

Hyatt Regency Milwaukee

www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory

Second-Round Deadline: November 1, 2009

 

AREA: Love and Food: Food and Intimacy in Film and History

 

Love and food. Love of food. Loving food. Living to eat. No matter how we say it, our relationship with food is both intimate and intricate. As food writer MFK Fisher puts it, "the alimentary canal contains the only stream that flows through all history and geography." How does the use of food in film and television build relationships with other characters, with other species, with real and fictional landscapes? 

In narrative films and documentaries alike, images of food fill our screens. How do feature films from around the world -- Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Raise the Red Lantern, Eat Drink Man Woman, Tortilla Soup - cast food as a central character? How do documentaries such as Super Size Me, King Corn, The Garden, and Food, Inc. explore the role that current industrial food-production systems play in creating environmental and social crises? Less overtly, how do take-out, fast-food, or prepared foods work as an index of cultural anxiety or yearning in films such as Little Miss Sunshine and The Cook, the Thief, Wife, and her Lover? 

This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes papers and panel proposals that examine all forms and genres of films and television that feature the complex relationships people have with food. Possibilities include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

 

Food and the construction of identity 

Food and family

Loving our neighbors: food and community building

Loving our country: food and national identity

Loving a new place: food and the immigrant experience

Loving/hating our land: food and the farm

Food and libido

Food and sex

Food and family

Loving our neighbors: food and community building

Loving our country: food and national identity

Loving/hating our land: food and the farm

La Gran Comilona: Loving food/Living to eat

Loving our bodies/hating our bodies

A love/hate relationship: using food to sell diet products on TV

Food as seduction

 

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair:

 

Deborah Adelman, Area Chair

College of DuPage

Liberal Arts Division

435 Fawell Blvd.

Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

Email: [log in to unmask] (email submissions preferred)

 

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory <http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory> ).

----
Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex
podcast:
http://www.screenlex.org