Food culture has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, moving to the forefront of many global and local cultural discourses. Among these discourses are the revival of old and/or dying culinary traditions, the promotion of exotic or underappreciated dishes, global fusion cooking, food and travel, ethical food consumption, the political and social dimensions of food production and consumption, and an examination of the potential for, and limitations to, eating sustainably. While much attention has been paid to practical, aesthetic, and social considerations of food, less has been examined concerning the semiotic and constructed aspects of food culture, in particular, what constitutes food, and for whom.
The editors seek essays that address topics that probe the oftentimes invisible or deeply coded messages about food in popular cultures, whether local food subcultures or global discourses and practices surrounding food. In particular, they are interested in research that combines cultural analysis of food cultures existing within various class systems, and analyses of visual and rhetorical representations of the commodification and codifying of what constitutes “food.” The goal of this edited collection is to challenge readers to re-evaluate perception and perspective in relation to food, in order to better comprehend everyday human experiences that sustain—or undermine—individuals and communities, including human-nonhuman communities and interrelationships between human food cultures and the natural world.
In order to unveil points of resistance at the heart of those activities most intimate to food practices, this collection will incorporate essays that cover a range of topics, including but not exclusive to:
- everyday complacencies of cultural constructions of food
- the tensions evident in consumer movement rhetoric
- logical fallacies common to patriarchal, anthropocentric, and capitalist thinking as embodied or replicated in food cultures
- energy consumption and eating
- advertising and promotion of foods
- domestication of animals, plants, and people in relation to food production
- reproducing and butchering animals
- bodily fragmentation and transition from a state of being to commodification
- ethical positions and paradoxes in relation to food practice
Send short bio and 250 word abstract by December 15 to 
H. Louise Davis at davishl3@miamioh.edu, Madhu Sinha at Sinham@miamioh.edu and/or Karyn J. Pilgrim at karyn.pilgrim@esc.edu.