Call for Papers: The Gustatory Turn in American Art
AHAA sponsored session at CAA
February 15-18, 2017, New York
Co-chairs: Guy Jordan, Western Kentucky University and Shana Klein, National Museum of American History
The rapid emergence of food studies programs, food studies journals, and museum exhibitions devoted to food reveals how the role of taste and digestion in American art has become a vibrant topic of study. This session examines the relationships between ocular and gastronomic delectation and visual consumption in paintings, prints, cookbooks, dietary manuals, and other forms of media that represent food and drink. This panel specifically invites papers that consider how artists used formal techniques to elicit pleasure or disgust in images of food and drink and how viewers responded to the sweet or unsavory qualities of an image. Paper proposals might also consider how images of food and drink interact with the social conventions of eating, dining, and consuming in their respective time periods. Proposals that evaluate the mechanics of taste and the ways in which these mechanics engage with political life and discourses of identity (i.e. race, class, and gender) are also welcome. The goal of this panel is to showcase scholarship that complements and advances the gustatory turn in American art.
Please send a one-page abstract and short c.v. by Monday, April 4 to Guy Jordan (guydjordan@gmail.com) and Shana Klein (Shana.Klein@gmail.com).