Sidney Mintz and Foodways Conference, Toronto, Oct.5

Foodways: Diasporic Diners, Transnational Tables, and Culinary Connections

170 St. George ST. rm 100
Time: Oct 4th, 9:00 am End: Oct 6th, 5:00 pm

Interest Categories: United States Studies, Sociology, Political Theory,
Philosophy (UTSC), Philosophy (UTM), Philosophy, History and Philosophy of
Science & Technology, History, Geography, Ethics, Environment, English and
Drama (UTM), English (UTSC), English, Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies,
Diaspora/Transnational, Critical Theory, Comparative Literature,
Communications, Communication and Culture (UTM), Art, Anthropology (UTM),
Anthropology, 2000-
Conference featuring Sidney Mintz, Johns Hopkins University; Marcy Norton,
George Washington University; Rick Wilk, Indiana University; and Harriet
Friedmann, University of Toronto


The Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and the Jackman Humanities
Institute Working Group on Diasporic Foodways are pleased to present
Foodways: Diasporic Diners, Transnational Tables, and Culinary Connections
This conference seeks to address questions surrounding the dynamics of the
food 'we' eat, the ways in which 'we' eat, the meaning 'we' give to
eating, and the effect of eating in a transnational world. Recognizing
that culinary culture is central to diasporic identifications, the focus
is on the place of food in the enduring habits, rituals, and everyday
practices that are collectively used to produce and sustain a shared
senses of cultural identity. Yet even as it does this work, food and the
practices of production, preparation and consumption that revolve around
it, cannot help but be drawn into wider cultures and cultural politics of
consumption increasingly grounded in the pursuit of qualities of
difference, acts of distinction and questions of justice. This focus on
food, cooking, and eating in diaspora and its role in connecting and
changing peoples,
places, tastes, and sensibilities around the world yields insight not only
to substances that people consider essential to the maintenance of
identity, but to the production of new cultural political formations in a
transnational world and to the role of cultural (re)production in the
expansion of consumption under contemporary capitalism. A focus on food
also reveals the dynamic role of historical pathways in understanding
cultural formations as they have existed through time, and in positioning
the present as a moment in a continuing process of structured mobility
that directs the movement of people, what they eat, and how they
understand themselves and the world around them. It also yields insight
into the multiple places and ways in which food assumes value and how that
value is
often reliant upon the continued reproduction of ties that bind people,
place, and practice across space and time. A great deal of academic work
explores this interplay of food, practice, identity and subject formation,
much of it bound together by a commitment that through a fuller
understanding of those relations, we better understand ourselves, our
pasts, and the complexities of the spaces and lives we inhabit and enact
in a transnational world. This conference seeks to enhance that
understanding.

Registration is required. Please visit the conference website to register.

http://www.humanities.utoronto.ca/event_details/id=580

Free Friday Symposium: Reading Sidney Mintz (7:30-9:30 pm in the William
Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St.)

For more information, please contact the Centre for Diaspora and
Transnational Studies.