CFP: "Fixing Foods in Literary Modernity," NeMLA Panel (9/30/2011; 3/15-18/2012)

Call for Papers: Fixing Foods in Literary Modernity

Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
March 15-18, 2012--Rochester, New York

For better and for worse, modernity has surely left its mark on the food we daily eat.  Two hundred years ago in 1812, Bryan Donkin purchased from a London broker the patent for canning food items inside tin containers. Within the next decade canned goods were widespread in Britain and France (Robertson 123). One hundred and fifty years ago in the spring of 1862, Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard’s experiments with heating liquids
eventually led to pasteurized drinks—first wine and beer and then, later, milk (Greene, Guzel-Seydim, and Seydim 88).

This panel explores how literature has addressed the last two hundred years of rapidly modernizing food—a path involving hybridization, preservation, pasteurization, synthesizing, and genetic manipulation.  If Brillat-Savarin’s aphorism is still telling today (“Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are”), what does literature tell us about the modern alimentary subject consuming and or pondering the foods altered by modernity?  Always already integrated into our lives on multiple levels, food could not be modernized without other far reaching implications.  When discussing food marked by modernity, what larger social or cultural preoccupations does literature engage?  How do different authors, historical periods, literary movements, or genres posit the “the mark of modernity” on food?  How might literary explorations of modernity and food inform our own contemporary food concerns?

Please send 300-500 word abstracts and a brief bio to Michael D. Becker, mdbecker@my.uri.edu, with “NeMLA 2012” as the subject.  Please include your name, affiliation, email address, and A/V requirements ($10 fee with registration). Deadline:  September 30, 2011

The 43rd annual convention will be held March 15-18th in Rochester, New York at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown, located minutes away from convenient air, bus, and train transportation options for attendees. St. John Fisher College will serve as the host college, and the diverse array of area institutions are coordinating with conference organizers to sponsor various activities, such as celebrated keynote speakers, local events, and fiction
readings.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/cfp.html

Cited:
Greene, Annel K., Zeynep B. Guzel-Seydim, and Atif Can Seydim. “The Safety of Ready-to-Eat Diary Products.” Ready-to-Eat Foods: Microbial Concerns and Control Measures. Ed. Andy Hwang and Lihan Huang. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis, 2010. 81-123. Print.

Roberts, Gordon L.  Food Packaging: Principles and Practice.  Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis, 2006. Print.