Food in Literature and the Arts

Conference Program

2012-01-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

7th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON
FOOD REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, FILM AND THE OTHER ARTS

February 23-25, 2012

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
College of Fine and Liberal Arts
The University of Texas at San Antonio

*

PROGRAM

Thursday, February 23

5:00 pm-8:00 pm ::: Registration

Inaugural Session
6:30 pm. Aula Canaria

Professor Marita Nummikoski, Chair, Dept. of Modern Languages & Literatures
Opening Remarks
Dean Dan Gelo, College of Liberal and Fine Arts
Welcome
Professor Christopher Wickham.
An Introduction to Talking about Food

Professor Renée S. Scott
University of North Florida
“Curb Your Appetite: Consumption and the Body in Latin American Women’s Fiction”

8:00 pm. ::: Reception (Cash Bar)
BV 1.338

Friday, February 24

I Session :: 8:30 am-9:45 am

Panel 1. Politics and Food
Chair:
Jessie Travis, McMaster University
“Drink Me, Eat Me: An Examination of the Economies of Food, Consumption,
and Thatcherite Politics in Alan Hollinghust The Line of Beauty.”
D. Brian Anderson, College of the Mainland
“Cannibalism and Irony in Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.”
James Girard
“Food in the Negative: Utility of the Body in Power Relations.”
Chris Frongillo, Florida Tech University
“Of Kings and Beggars: Food, Folk Culture, and Popular Dissent in Christopher
Marlowe’s Drama.”

Panel 2. Memorable Chefs
Chair:
Adrienne Kiki Aranita and Christopher Vacca, Bryn Mawr College
“Plating Pasts: Translations of Cuisine, Culture and Memory.”
Jenny Agnew, St. Louis University
“'Chasing Greatness' vs. 'The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef': A
Comparison of Grant Achatz's and Gabrielle Hamilton's Chef Memoirs.”

Friday, February 24

II Session :: 10:00 am-11:15 am

Panel 3. The Detective Novel in Spanish

Chair and Organizer: Genaro J. Pérez, Texas Tech University
Jeffrey Oxford, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Food and Food Gathering as Status Symbols in the Detective Fiction of
Reyes Calderón Cuadrado.”
Genaro J. Pérez, Texas Tech University
“Un recorrido por las confecciones culinarias de Carvalho”.
Janet Pérez, Texas Tech University.
“Banquetes en dos hemisferios: El hombre que amaba a los perros, por
Leonardo Padura Fuentes”.

Panel 4. Significant Food in American Fiction
Chair and Organizer: Jeff Birkenstein, Saint Martin’s University
Megan J. Elias
“Owen Wister’s Lady Baltimore: Who Will Pay for the Cake?”
Amanda Konkle, University of Kentucky.
“Toxic Intercourse: Ruth Ozeki’s Significant Food in All Over Creation.”
Jeff Birkenstein, Saint Martin’s University
“Food as the Foundation to Community in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”

Friday, February 24

III Session :: 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Panel 5. Contemporary Spanish Novel
Chair: Carlos Ardavín, Trinity University
Alison Atkins, University of Virginia
“Mollejas, brotes de alfalfa y champiñones de lata: Food Practices and the
Everyday in Almudena Grande’s Malena es un nombre de tango.”
Melissa M. Culver, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
“La vida de hambre/el hambre de vida en dos novelas españolas de
posguerra: Nada y Nosotros, los Rivero”.
Barbara Blithe Ware, Keene State College
“The Pedro Carvalho Series by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: A
Passionate Exploration of Cuisine and Contemporary Society.”

Panel 6. Post Colonial Eating
Chair:
Igor Cusack, University of Birmingham
“Tinned Sardines and Putrefied Yellow-Fin: Food in the Literature of
Equatorial Guinea.”
Ajayi Adewale, The Federal Polytechnic, Nigeria
“The Bar as Context of Life’s Bizarre Enactments in the Novels of Ben
Okri.”

Lunch Break

Friday, February 24

IV Session :: 2:30 pm-3:45 pm

Panel 7. More than Just Recipes: Spanish Cookbooks and the Construction of Modern Spain
Chair and organizer: María Paz Moreno, University of Cincinnati
María Paz Moreno, University of Cincinnati.
“Los sabores de la vida retirada. Recetarios de conventos y monasterios
españoles”.
Rebecca Ingram, University of San Diego.
“Mass-Market Cookbooks and a Spanish Bluestocking’s ‘Double Writing.’”
Lara Anderson, University of Melbourne.
“Nineteenth-Century Spanish Cooking Books: Combining Foreign and
Indigenous Cuisines.”

Panel 8. American Ethnic Food
Chair:
Nicole M. Stamant, Agnes Scott College
“Negotiating Aisles of Race, Gender, and Family through Food in Stealing
Buddha’s Dinner.”
Liang Ying, Beijing Foreign Studies University
“Sex, Food, and Ethnicity in Mei Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked.”
Anton L. Smith, Loyola Marymount University
“Eating to Live, Living to Eat: Consuming Passions and the Representation of
Soul Food in Afro-American Literature.”

Friday, February 24

V Session :: 4:00 pm-5:15 pm

Panel 9. Asian Perspectives
Chair:
Ankita Haldar, Jawaharial Nehru University.
“Savoury Narratives: A Gastronomic Exploration of Gender and Love.”
Kirsten Komara, Shreiner University
“Chiles and Cheese: A Culinary Look at the Kingdom of Bhutan.”

Panel 10. Hispanoamérica en España
Chair:
Armando Chávez-Rivera, University of Houston, Victoria
“Domando a los esclavos: comida y castigos en la literatura cubana del siglo
XIX”.
Ana Fernández, Duke University.
“De asados con cuero, humitas, charque y mazamorras: el ‘menú’ del Chaco en la
‘mesa’ de El Imparcial”.
Rebecca Ingram, University of San Diego
“’El primer mapa gastronómico de España’: The ‘Slight Revolt’ in Ramón Gómez
de la Serna’s Gastronomical Humor.”

Friday, February 24

VI Session :: 5:15 pm-6:00 pm

Dining and Art: a Video
Chair:
Mohammad Rezaei, Alberta College of Art and Design
“Taste Classifies the Classifier”
“Food and Art”, a video

Saturday, February 25

VII Session :: 9:00 am-10:15 am

Panel 11. The Irish at Table and Other Eating Ways
Chair:
Tricia Cusack, University of Birmingham
“’Will the Little Puddings Be Split?’ Images of the Irish at Table in the Long
Nineteenth Century.”
Laura C. Pfeffer Waugh, Arizona State University
“’Crushing in the Winepress Grapes’: Leopold Bloom’s Artistic Revision of
History in James Joyce’s Ulysses.”
Merrianne Timko, Diversified Research Associates
“Exploring Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet from a Culinary Perspective.”

Panel 12. Teaching and Food

Chair:
Marta Montemayor, San Antonio College
“El sabor de la cultura”.
Ana María Fox Baker
“Comida y tradición en México”.
Raquel Oxford, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“The Meaning of Food: Teaching Culture and Cultural Identities.”
Laurel Smith Stvan, The University of Texas at Arlington
“Take it with a Pinch of Salt: Polysemy in Vernacular Discussion of Salt.”

Saturday, February 25

VII Session :: 10:30 am-11:30 am

Panel 13. Tamales y más
Chair:
M. Dustin Knepp, University of Central Arkansas
“Tamales and Tradition in Latino Children’s Literature.”
Hilda Velásquez
“La publicidad y la comida, elementos convergentes en la transmisión cultural:
una mirada a la publicidad dirigida a hispanos ”.

Panel 14. San Antonio Tradition
Chair: MaryEllen García, UTSA
Susanne Kimball, UTSA
“Chile Queen”
Francisco Marcos-Marín, UTSA
“San Antonio gastro-linguistic landscape.”

Saturday, February 25

VIII Session :: 11:45 am-1:00 pm

Panel 15. Women and Food
Chair:
Juli McLoone, UTSA
“Celebrating a Woman’s Place in America’s Bicentennial.”
Marjanne Oosting, University of Amsterdam
“Food in Esther Kreitman’s Der Sheydim-tants.”
Judy E. Perkin, University of North Florida
“Friendship and Baked Goods: Cooking and Eating as Love, Survival and
Reconciliation.”

Panel 16. Sentimental Gastronomy
Chair: Santiago Daydi-Tolson, UTSA
Lilianet Brintrup. Humboldt State University
“The poetry of Potato.”
Eliana Rivero, The University of Arizona
“Food Representation and Santiago’s Bodega: A Gastronomic Journal of Life’s
Moments.”

Buffet Lunch
1:00 pm

How to peel an onion

2011-12-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

In his autobiographical book Peeling the Onion (New York: Harcourt, 2007), Günter Grass writes: “of all products of the soil the onion is the best suited for literature. Whether it unwraps the memory skin by skin or moistens dried-up tear ducts and causes tears to flow, it is a valid metaphor. . .” (330-331). Aptly title, Peeling the Onion is a book of memories with several references to food. One of its chapters, “Guests at Table” (pp. 160-200) is of particular interest to the subject of hunger and food and its treatment as a literary motive. Hunger and the desire for food evolve into an interest in cooking and good eating not too different from the enjoyment of art and literature and the need to create a work of art.

2010-02-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

As part of the

6th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON FOOD REPRESENTATION IN THE HUMANITIES, FILM AND THE ARTS

at
The University of Texas
at San Antonio
Downtown Campus

February 25-27, 2010

The John Peace Library Special Collections' Librarian Juli McLoone has curated the

Book Exhibit:
Highlights of the Laure Gruenbeck Mexican Cookbook Collection

at The University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown Campus Library
and
will hold an open Cookbook Reading Room
on
Saturday, February 27, from 9:00 am till noon
at
Buena Vista Building 2.314L

For more information on the John Peace Library Special Collections see: http://lib.utsa.edu/Archives

Pictured: Valdes, Ramona. Cocina práctica: pastelería, repostería, salchichonería, helados. México : Ediciones Botas, 1937. This cookbook is inscribed “A mi amiga Adela French” and signed “Carlos Fernández 2/28/1938.” Several of the recipes include handwritten annotations. An additional recipe for “Fresh Chili Verde” is written on the title page.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals. A book review by Steven G. Kellman

2010-02-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

In Everything Is Illuminated (2002), a character named Jonathan Safran Foer flabbergasts his Ukrainian guide, Alex Perchov. "I'm a vegetarian," the visiting American declares. "I do not understand," Alex replies. A dialogue of mutual incomprehension ensues: "'I don't eat meat.' 'Why not?' 'I just don't.' 'How can you not eat meat?' . . . 'I just don't. No meat.' 'Pork?' 'No.' 'Meat?' 'No meat.' 'Steak?' 'Nope.' 'Chickens?' 'No.' 'Do you eat veal?' 'Oh, God. Absolutely no veal.' 'What about sausage?' 'No sausage either.'" The starving traveler is forced to feast on two potatoes.

               Eating Animals, Foer's first book of nonfiction, answers Perchov's "Why not?" with a more cogent explanation. An apologia pro diaeta sua, it begins in fond remembrance of his grandmother's chicken and carrots. Foer passed through vegetarian interludes throughout adolescence and consumed animal protein only occasionally after he married. When his son was born three years ago, he renounced meat entirely and began this book. Discomforting thoughts of a child gorging on flesh may have inspired Foer to make the nine-year-old narrator of his second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), a vegan. Like Leo Tolstoy, J. M. Coetzee, Franz Kafka, and Margaret Atwood, Foer extends his empathy to nonhuman beings. "For the animals," wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, another literary vegetarian, "it is an eternal Treblinka."

              Appalled that "upwards of 99 percent of all meat eaten in this country comes from 'factory farms,'" Foer sets out to comprehend what eating animals entails in the stages leading up to consumption. He participates in a clandestine nighttime raid on an industrial turkey operation. The supervisor of a facility where fifty thousand birds share a single shed tells him: "High-yield farming has allowed everyone to eat." Foer examines the price we pay—in environmental devastation, zoonotic pathogens, food-borne toxins, and complicity in atrocity—for cheap meat. Genetically engineered for maximum yield of flesh and profit, billions of pigs, chickens, and cows annually endure torture before their wretched lives are terminated, often painfully. "The factory farm," he concludes, "has succeeded by divorcing people from their food, eliminating farmers, and ruling agriculture by corporate fiat." Eating is applied ethics, and Foer contends that we can act on our values every day by refusing meat.

He visits some remaining family farms, where animals are not debeaked, tail docked, castrated, branded, drugged, or otherwise treated as machines incapable of experiencing agony. He deplores the market forces eliminating both these farms and the few abattoirs where gratuitous cruelty is rare. In its astonishing conclusion, Eating Animals breaks with the growing chorus of philosophers, farm advocates, environmentalists, and nutritionists who advocate for a plant-based diet. Though still a devout vegan, Foer recognizes that most other Americans will continue to eat meat. So out of "the very same impulse that makes [him] personally committed to eschewing meats, eggs, and dairy," he has, through an organization he founded called Farm Forward, begun building humane slaughterhouses. The oxymoronicity would be clearer if, instead of chickens and turkeys, the objects of slaughter were dogs, chimpanzees, or humans, beings we feel more squeamish about killing. "A straightforward case for vegetarianism is worth writing," writes Foer, "but it's not what I've written here." Yet he has, though the implications of what eating animals really entails will be hard for most readers to swallow.

From: Bookforum Dec/Jan 2010

Food Conference Keynote Speaker

2010-02-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

Department of History

College of Liberal and Fine Arts

The University of Texas at San Antonio

announce the

6th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON

FOOD REPRESENTATION IN THE HUMANITIES, FILM AND THE ARTS

Keynote Speaker
Professor Steven G. Kellman
"The Only Fit Food for a Man is Half a Lemon": Kafka's Plea and Other Culinary Aberrations

Friday, February 26

6:30 pm Aula Canaria

University of Texas at San Antonio

Downtown Campus

With the support of an HEB grant

A professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he has taught since 1976, Steven G. Kellman was UTSA’s first Ashbel Smith Professor (1995-2000). He has also taught at the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Irvine and at Bemidji State Minnesota and Tel-Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley and his B.A. in English and General Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Literature at the University of Sofia and a Fulbright Senior Lectureship at Tbilisi State University and twice served as Partners of the Americas lecturer in Peru. He was twice awarded the UTSA President’s Distinguished Achievement Award in Recognition of Research Excellence (1990-91, 2005-2006) and once received the campus-wide teaching award (1985-86). Kellman has served as John E. Sawyer fellow at Harvard University’s Longfellow Institute and has held an NEH research grant, an NEH grant to South Africa, and a Fulbright-Hays grant to China. He was honored with the 2005 Arts and Letters Award of the San Antonio Public Library Foundation and with the 2008 Gemini Ink Literary Excellence Award.

Kellman is the author of Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth (W. W. Norton, 2005), which was honored with the 2005 New York Society Library Award for Biography and was praised in the San Francisco Chronicle as "not only a necessary addition to the annals of American literature, but also a trenchant exploration of the relationship between the horrors of life and the saving power of art." Kellman's other books include The Translingual Imagination (2000), The Plague: Fiction and Resistance (1993), Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text (1985), and The Self Begetting Novel (1980). He is editor or co editor of M. E. Ravage’s An American in the Making (2009), Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft (2003), UnderWords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo's Underworld (2002), Torpid Smoke: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (2000), Leslie Fiedler and American Culture (1999), Into The Tunnel: Readings in Gass's Novel (1998), and Perspectives on Raging Bull (1994). Since 2001, he has co edited Magill's Literary Annual.

A contributing writer for The Texas Observer and the San Antonio Current, Kellman received the 1986 H. L. Mencken Award for his column in the San Antonio Light. He was awarded first place in arts criticism by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in 2006 and received the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction for an essay in the Southwest Review during 2008. He is currently serving his third term as a director of the National Book Critics Circle and was recipient of the NBCC's 2007 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. His essays and reviews have appeared in The American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffingtonpost.com, Forward, Michigan Quarterly Review, New York Times Book Review, Georgia Review, The Nation, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among many other publications. Kellman was founding president of the literary center Gemini Ink and was elected into the Texas Institute of Letters.

2010-02-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

This exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art is an excellent example of what art can do with foood as its subject.

Revised Final Conference Program

2010-01-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

6th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON
FOOD REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, FILM AND THE OTHER ARTS
February 25-27, 2010
PROGRAM
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
College of Fine and Liberal Arts
The University of Texas at San Antonio
With the Support of the
Department of History
College of Fine and Liberal Arts
and
HEB

Thursday, February 25
5:00 pm-8:00 pm ::: Registration

6:30 pm. Aula Canaria :::

Marita Nummikoski, Chair, Dept. of Modern Languages & Literatures
Opening Remarks
Dean Dan Gelo, College of Liberal and Fine Arts
Welcome
Professor Christopher Wickham.
An Introduction to Talking about Food

7:00 pm. Aula Canaria :::

Steenson, Keeley -- The University of Texas at Austin
Two Short Films
Patrick Santé – Chef
Dinning as art - "The three stars"

8:00 pm. Reception (Cash Bar)

Friday, February 26th, 2010
I Session 8:30 am - 9:45 am

Panel 1. Food and Nation
Tebben, Maryann -- Bard College at Simon's Rock
The Concentrated Essence of Culture: Sauces as Metaphor in French Literature
Moran, Theresa -- Ohio University
Bayard Taylor, "The Great American Traveler," Afield with the Cup and the Pipe
Scholl, Jan -- Penn State University
Film Comedy Educated the Public about Food, 1911-1931

Panel 2. Film I
Matz, María R -- University of Massachusetts Lowell
El papel de la comida en la filmografía almodovariana
Chien-Cheng, Wu (James) -- Durham University of UK
Nostalgic Foodscape of Modern Taipei
Lirot, Julie -- Dartmouth College
Food as Cultural Identity in Exile

Panel 3. Food Pleasures I
Bobroff, Maria --
Gluttonous Pleasures: Arlequin, Sentimentality and Eighteenth-Century French Theater
Rich, Lauren G. -- University of Notre Dame
Conspicuous Consumption: Food & Dining in Eighteenth-Century Fantastic Literature

Friday, February 26th, 2010
II Session 10:00 am - 11:15 am

Panel 4. Film II
Israel, Deborah --
Whisk, Whisk! Chop, Chop!: The Kinesthetics of Cooking in Nor Ephron's Julie and Julia
Kumar, Nirmal -- Sri Vankateswara College
Food and Construction of motherhood in Hindi Films
Rundell, Richard -- New Mexico State University
Through His Stomach, North and South: Babette's Feast (1987), Like Water for Chocolate (1992), and Mostly Martha (2002)
Chalaire, Mary Anne -- University of Texas Pan American
The Americanization of Mostly Martha

Panel 5. Imagining Nations
Guy, Kolleen M. -- The University of Texas at San Antonio
History, the Culinary Turn, and Cultures of Abundance
Goldstein, Lauren --
Currying F(l)avour: Cultural Hybridization, India, and the British Empire
Timko, Merrianne -- Independent Researcher
Flaubert, Dumas, and Frith in the Land of the Pharaohs … In "The Land of Pilau"

Panel 6. Pedagogical Foods
Crosetto, Alice -- The University of Toledo
The Use of Food in Children's Literature: An Exploration
Oxford, Raquel -- University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Joaquín Sorolla: Food Representation in Celebrations and Work
González, Ana María – Texas Lutheran University
Naranja dulce, limón partido: el dulce, el chile y la manteca de la lírica tradicional latinoamericana

Friday, February 26th, 2010
III Session 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Panel 7. Comfort Food in Eco-Tourism
Cohen Miller, Anna --- Palo Alto College
Discussant: Discussion and Food Tasting of Indigenous South American Comfort Foods as Represented in Student Projects.

Panel 8. Literary Food
Bueno, Lourdes -- Austin College
Comida y comensales: “Delicias gastronómicas” en los clásicos españoles
Alpañés Pastor, María Amparo -- Washington and Jefferson College
Memoria, estatus e ingenio: el papel de la comida en Hoy caviar, mañana sardinas de Carmen y Gervasio Posadas
Agnew, Jennifer -- Harris-Stowe State University
Preparing 'Good Things to Eat': Creating Identity of Autonomy in Early African-American Food Writing

Panel 9. Fat Food
Garner, Kirsten E – UTSA
Nutritional Science
Candau, Antonio -- Case Western Reserve University
"No me come nada": A New -- Fat Free -- Spanish Author
Julier, Alice P -- Chatham University
Fat and Fighting Words: Obesity Discourses, Sustainability, and the Rhetoric of Resistance

Lunch Break

Friday, February 26th, 2010
IV Session 2:00 pm-3:15 pm

Panel 10. People’s Identity
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen --
Taking Back the Chicken Shack: African-American Challenges to White Food Stereotypes during the Civil Rights Era
Laemmerhirt, Iris-Aya -- University of Heilderberg and TU Dormund University
The Raw and the Cooked: National Identities, Othering and Resistance in Linda Furiya's Bento Box in the Hearland and Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meat
Caddell, Preston --
A study of Kimchi and its Cultural and Economical Effects in South Korean Society

Panel 11 Food Pleasures II
Gimbernat González, Ester -- University of Northern Colorado
Sazón inesperada en poemas en prosa de escritoras argentinas
Morris, Matt --
After the Party: Artistic Hindsight as Crowns Were Passed at the Fench Revolution and the Localvore Revolution
Van Zwoll, Lisa -- United Staes Air Force Academy
Madame at the Butter Churn: the Marquise de La Tour du Pin Cooks up Identity on the Farm

Panel 12. Literatura Cubana
Cornide, Ana -- Earlham College
Préstamos culturales y venenos: la nutrición del vacío en la cuentística de Virgilio Piñera
Vico Corvalán, Graciela N. -- Webster University
Cuerpo, carne, hambre, locura y autodestrucción en la obra de Virgilio Piñera
Torres Caballero, Benjamín -- Western Michigan University
La función de la comida en la literatura cubana contemporánea

Friday, February 26th, 2010
V Session 3:30 pm-4:45 pm

Panel 13. The Aesthetics and Politics of Scarcity
del Aguila, Rocío -- The University of Texas at Austin
The Real Eclectic Kitchen: Impoverished Indians and Wealthy Criollos Seated at the Same Table
Navarro, José Enrique -- The University of Texas at Austin
Hell's Kitchen: Images of Immigrant Labor in Parisian Restaurants in George Orwell and Santiago Gamboa
Tamayo, Cristine -- The University of Texas at Austin
The Liminal Kitchen: Textual Representations of Wartime Scarcity and the Male Provider in Civil War Spain

Panel 14. Food for the Soul
Chansky, Dorothy -- Texas Tech University
No Picnic: Food and Dystopia in the Plays of William Inge
McLeod, Stephen G. -- Jackson State University
Food for the Soul: The Power of Allusion in Chuck Sullivan's "Grace after Meals: Thanksgiving 1958"
O'Connor, Amber -- The University of Texas at Austin
Contemporary Religious Conversion in Quintana Roo: Changes in Religion, Communalism, Economy and Nutrition in a Maya Village

Panel 15. Pot-Pourri
Heise, Henriette --
Food and the Disgust of Existence: Sartre's narrative Nourritures
Duhaime, Douglas -- University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Mushrooms and the Margins of Agency: The Limitations of Cage's Chance Operations
Nieto, Nicole K. --
St Joseph's Day Altars: Collective Identity and Narrative in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Friday, February 26th, 2010

6:30 pm Aula Canaria

Steven G. Kellman
"The Only Fit Food for a Man is Half a Lemon":
Kafka's Plea and Other Culinary Aberrations

Saturday, February 27th, 2010
VI Session 8:30 am-9:45 am

Panel 16. Food and Leisure
Russek, Audrey -- The University of Texas at Austin
What's for Dinner?: The Absence of Food in American Restaurant Promotional Literature, 1920-1960
Janosik, Jeffrey -- Univeristy of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
More Cumin than Cumin: Imaginary Foodscapes and Representational Otherness in the US Mexican Restaurant
Warren, Dinah J. -- Dartmouth College
The Pursuit of Authenticity: The Impact of Tourism on Traditional Culinary Practices in Bahia

Panel 17. Mythologies
Aranda Silva, Alfredo -- University of Wisconsin La Crosse
Cosmogonía literaria del Café: De la semilla del cafeto a la mitología de los espacios enmarcados en sus correlatos artísticos
Namaste, Nina B --
Killing Him Softly: Identity Control in Myrna Santos Febres' 'Marina y su olor'
Morán, Elizabeth – Christopher Newport University
Feast for the Gods: Eating, Ritual, and Sacrifice in Aztec Art

Panel 18. The Labyrinth
Martínez-Ortiz, María Teresa -- Kansas State University
Violence, Hunger and the Politics of Social Control in Pan's Labyrinth: Analysis of Guillermo del Toro's Symbolic Imagery
Kordas, Ann -- Johnson & Wales Univeristy
Mother's Milk and Father's Bread: The Power of the Feminine in Pan's Labyrinth

Saturday, February 27th, 2010
VII Session 10:00 am-11:15 am

Panel 19. TV Shows
Goetzel, Johanna -- Wesleyan University
What is Not Said: The Food Network's Silenced Voices
McCullough, Cali --
Yum-O! From Julia Child to Rachel Ray: Defining the Success of the Celebrity Chef
Fong-Morgan, Bridget M-- Indiana University South Bend
We're Mixing Up a Murder: Television Cooking Shows and the Culinary Mystery

Panel 20. European Literature
Komara, Kirsten -- Schreiner University
Culture, Class, and Character: Representations of Food in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley
Kimball, Susanne --- UTSA
Cullinary Allusions, Decline and Spiritual Refinement in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks
Ware, Barbara Blithe --- Keene State College
The Creation of a National Culinary Canon: Emilia Pardo Bazán’s Gendered Authority

Panel 21. US Latino
Fernández, Ana -- Stony Brook University
Comida, memoria y creación de identidades en Caramelo de Sandra Cisneros y Monkey Hunting de Cristina García
Pignataro, Margarita E. -- Syracuse University
Bicultural Nutrition in Cuban-American Literature: Food Representation in Cuisine, Cosmetics and Religion
Knepp, M. Dustin -- University at Albany, State University of New York
The Role and Representation of Mexican Food in Life and Literature: an Ethnographic Comparison
Cárdenas, Norma – Oregon State University
Food, Place, Identity, and Memory in Woman Hollering Creek

Saturday, February 27th, 2010
VIII Session 11:30 am-12:45 pm

Panel 22. Hunger and Food
Rostankowski, Cynthia -- San Jose State University
The Other Mother's Roast Chicken: Authentic Food and Comfort in Neil Gaiman's Coraline
Heydl-Cortínez, Cecilia -- Penn State University
Hombres de maíz and Women Too: Corn is Food for the Soul from the Popol Vuh to Asturias and Chicana Writers
Moreno, María Paz -- University of Cincinnati
Eggless Omelets, Fried Sunflowers and Lots of Sardines: Cookbooks from the Spanish Civil War

Panel 23 Food in Language and Literature
Oxford, Jeffrey -- University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Food and Food Gathering as Status Symbols in the Valencian Cycle and Beyond
Niño, Miguel A. -- Saint Edward's University
La comida: un elemento íntegro de la corrupción mexicana en Arráncame la vida
Stanford, Lois -- New Mexico State University
Como los frijoles del payaso…: Food Dichos in Mexico

Panel 24. Male and Food
McLean, Alice --
From Domestic Cookbooks to Gastronomic Literature: Gender and Genre in Nineteenth-Century Food Writing
Vester, Katharina -- American University
"Wolves in Chef's Clothing": Recipes for Masculinity in Hemingway, Hammett and Early Men's Cookbooks
Kolberg, Stephanie -- The University of Texas at Austin
Food in Porn: The Classing of Disgust and Desire in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler
Rao, Suweta -- University of Illinois Urbana Champain
The Men in Kitchen: Bawarchi and Cheeni Kum

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Buffet Lunch 1:00 pm

Stefani Bardin -- University of Buffalo
Food Issues, a Video Project. Continuous showing on Friday and Saturday

Food Sites

2010-01-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

We have just added to our blog a new link to a site that offers a lot of information on food and a list of links to other sites: http://www.onthetable.us/

Intellectual Nourishment

2009-03-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Ovations, a publication of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, The University of Texas at San Antonio has an article, "Intellectual Nourishment", commenting the Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts, held every two years at the The University of Texas San Anton io Downtown Campus. You can see the article following the link,
http://colfa.utsa.edu/colfa/Ovations/food.html , or read it here:

As a boy in Chile, Santiago Daydi-Tolson often passed time on the coast searching for clams in the sandy shore. Or he was inside, enjoying conversation and coffee at the dining table. While these may seem like disparate activities, there is one common denominator: food.
The use of food in that childhood memory gives the story more detail and poignancy, Daydi-Tolson says. “What seems everyday and kind of mundane can and does have a lot more meaning.”
Daydi-Tolson, a professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature, has researched and written about the prevalence and meaning of food in art and literature for more than 10 years. The representation of food in the art world is fundamentally the celebration of people and their place in the world, he says. “It just shows how art is involved in so many subtle ways with human nature. It is something that weighs strongly in the way people live, think, feel and react.”
To more deeply explore the function of food in art, Daydi-Tolson has organized five food conferences since 2000, composed of people who, like him, believe that it reveals an abundance of information about the way people live.
Called the Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts, the event draws scholars who specialize in food studies and other fields from as far away as the University of Tokyo and as nearby as Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. The conference expands the study of human thought in references to food in written, spoken and visual communication. They explore the philosophical, psychological, political and religious messages imbedded in each work. Even the field of marketing in popular culture is on the menu: think of the apple in Macintosh computer promotions.
After the first conference eight years ago, participants requested Daydi-Tolson and his colleagues repeat the gathering every two years. The most recent conference—funded in part through a gift from H-E-B—was in February. The next one is scheduled for 2010.
Participants also have created an electronic journal, Convivium Artium, which means “Banquet of the Arts” in Latin, to further explore the subject. In the magazine, participants can electronically publish studies on food and the humanities.
Daydi-Tolson says people don’t have to be food connoisseurs or scholars to understand the interest. Even a cursory look shows how artists apply food to convey religious, ideological, cultural, political and economic perspectives.
Consider Vincent Van Gogh’s dark depiction of the poor eating a scant meal of potatoes during a time of famine in “The Potato Eaters.” Subtle details in the painting, such as an oil lamp as the sole lighting source, the thin and rough hands of those that are gathered around the table and the use of potatoes as the lone food in the meal, are used to illustrate the depth of the people’s poverty. Leonardo da Vinci’s use of leavened bread in his depiction of the momentous “Last Supper” has been used by researchers to determine whether the historic event took place during Passover.
Daydi-Tolson stresses that food is not used by artists as an afterthought; it is a deliberate theme. “It is there for some particular reason,” he says. In essence, he says, food becomes another character in their works.
Daydi-Tolson has focused on famous writers. For example, he noted that the classic novel, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, “talks about food and eating in practically every chapter.” Charles Dickens took a similar tack, particularly in A Christmas Carol. Then there is Ernest Hemingway, who often used food in his writings. He is credited with using big-game hunts in life and literature as a way to establish a masculine identity for both his characters and himself.
Have an appetite for more information about Daydi-Tolson’s work? E-mail Santiago.dayditolson@utsa.edu.

A Philosophical Buffet
As in recipes, opening remarks are required for a conference about the depiction of food in literature and the arts.
When Christopher Wickham, associate dean of UTSA’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts, began thinking about the topic, he decided to use equal parts humor and humanity.
“Perhaps it was someone calling me sweetie pie or cutie pie; pie is generally held to [mean] ‘nice’ in English: nice as pie is a favored expression,” Wickham told the audience. “Someone might be considered to be the crème de la crème, which is really only the gourmet way of saying cream of the crop,” he said. “People might be full of the milk of human kindness, as Shakespeare had it.”
Look at your companion, Wickham advised, as they might have an attractive peach-like complexion or less so—pasty-faced or whey-faced.
More mature people might have salt-and-pepper hair, and kindred spirits might be as alike as two peas in a pod with wit as keen as mustard or more salt of the earth, he said.
Even people’s emotional states are prone to food analogies, typically fruits and vegetables, he said. People “go bananas from time to time, just as we all know someone who is nutty, nuts or even nutty as a fruit cake.” The proverbial couch potato simply requires a sofa to veg out.
The working world has its own food ties, such as a plum job paying big dough or the antithesis: getting paid peanuts when bean counters have their way. At the end of the day, it’s important to bring home the bacon while not working so hard that you have too much on your plate.
The human body is rife with edible similes, or as Wickham described them, “the alimentation of anatomy.” A head is sometimes called a noodle, and cauliflower ear might merit a visit to a plastic surgeon.
Wickham adopted the cadence of the late comedian George Carlin for the remainder of his food-based philosophical observations:
If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. If you are in the soup, you try not to get in a stew. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. It might not be your cup of tea, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Sometimes you have to wake up and smell the coffee, but if you don’t bite off more than you can chew, it’s not such a tough nut to crack. As long as you don’t end up hitting the sauce, life is a piece of cake. And don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. That’s baloney. We may try not to compare apples and oranges, but sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it.
I’ll stop and let you get to the meat of this conference. Suffice it to say that food is a two-way street, it crosses our tongues in both directions: inbound, we ingest the signified, the food, to stay alive and, outbound, we express the signifier, the words as communication and literature, to make life worth living.

WEB EXTRA: Listen to the NPR podcast of “The Splendid Table,” featuring the UTSA food conference, at www.utsa.edu/today/2008/02/SplendidTable2-23-08.mp3.

CALL FOR PAPERS

2009-01-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

6th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON
FOOD REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, FILM
AND THE OTHER ARTS

San Antonio, Texas
February 25-27, 2010

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
College of Liberal and Fine Arts
The University of Texas at San Antonio

The objective of this interdisciplinary, multicultural conference is to examine, celebrate, and enjoy the variety of ways in which food has been represented in literature and the other arts throughout time and throughout the planet.

Two hundred-word summaries of papers on any aspect of the general theme and written in any of the several languages taught at The University of Texas at San Antonio (English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic) will be considered. Proposals for special panels will also be accepted.

Proposals for individual papers or sessions should be postmarked or e-mailed (as a Word document attachment) no later than September 25, 2009 and should be addressed to:

Professor Santiago Daydí-Tolson
Department of Modern Languages & Literatures
The University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, Texas 78249-0644
e-mail: santiago.dayditolson@utsa.edu

For more detailed and updated information, including previous Conference Programs, and Convivium Artium, the electronic journal on food representation in literature and the arts visit the Conference Web Page: http://flan.utsa.edu/foodconf or http://foodinlitart.blogspot.com

A cup of tea

2008-08-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Perched on top of the piles of books, the empty cup of tea --for someone else it might be coffee-- is a reminder of the close relationship between the pleasures of reading and drinking. Books and cups are practical and beatiful objects man has created for his satisfaction. They have the beauty of the thing designed for everiday use, for practical living. They complement each other.

A Film Clip on Coffee

2008-03-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

Searching for film scenes about food I have found several brief clips of Italian films. The link included at the end of this note takes you to a beautifully acted scene from a sixties film in which Sophia Loren prepares coffe for Vitorio Gassman. This is an excellent example on how food is an inspiring subject that leads to beautiful art. The scene combines the insinuating dialogue in a simple but suggestive space with the sensual photography of Loren talking about how to prepare coffy as she handles the coffe maker in the actual preparation of a perfect cup of coffy. The pervading sepia tone of the whole scene is suggestive of the warmth of the drink and its brown hue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl7ErioJQlI

Conference mentioned at "The Splendid Table"

2008-02-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

"The Spledid Table" included a few minutes of its Saturday, February 23 program, to commenting the Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film, and the Other Arts. You can hear the segment at the following address: http://www.utsa.edu/today/2008/02/foodconf.cfm

Postprandial Musings

2008-02-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

The dinner party is over. The guests have left, and in postprandial languor the host feels the emptiness that follows all gatherings after everyone is gone. As with every good dinner, planning and preparation took long hours of dedication and the actual party went too fast. There was so little time to talk to all those present, to listen to all that was being discussed by them, to make plans for a future similar encounter around the table.

The ideals of the slow food movement become so much more urgent as we find ourselves trying to cover hastily so much in such a short limited time. We need to adopt in our academic endeavors the slow pace of good cooking and prolong our research in a continuous and lasting process. The enthusiasm and encouragement shown by so many of the participants in the conference have convinced me that there is a need to continue planning and working for the long run, for a project that will last beyond the few days of an academic meeting.

One hopes, then, that the memory of the party we just had--a pot-luck of sorts as each one brought a distinct contribution to the feast--will not fade too soon and the conversations and the exchange of ideas and insights will continue for a long time as more people come to participate with us in the joy of talking about food and its complex meanings.

Let this blog serve for the moment as a meeting place for those who will like to follow the conversation they started during our three days of convivial academic dialogue. I will try to keep it active by providing regularly information about any developments of interest for our research and its propagation. Of course I would like to hear from those who could add to the usefulness of this instrument. In the following weeks I plan to mail to those who participated in the conference, and publish here, some proposals I am concocting while I muse about the now completed 5th Conference on Food Representation. . .

As organizers of the conference we are thankful for the interest, support and enormous contribution of all of the presenters who, after all, constituted the actual conference, and we are counting on them for future developments.

Conference Announcements

2008-01-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

Remember to reserve your hotel rooms.

The Radisson Hotel Market Square is offering a special conference rate of $99.00 plus taxes per night for single or double occupancy. You must contact them before Monday, January 28 in order to get this special conference rate.

For reservations at the Radisson Hotel Market Square call 1-800-333-3333, or (210) 224-7155 and let them know you are attending the UTSA Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Food Conference. You can also make your reservations on line at http://www.radisson.com/. The hotel’s electronic page can be seen at: www.radisson.com/sanantoniotx .

Food Drive
Students are holding a food drive in connection with the conference; your contribution in the form of non perishable food items will be appreciated. A collection box will be available at the registration site.

Conference Program

2008-01-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

5th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON
FOOD REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, FILM
AND THE OTHER ARTS
February 21-23, 2008
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
The University of Texas at San Antonio

Program

Thursday, February 21
5:00 pm-7:00 pm ::: registration

6:30 pm. Aula Canaria ::: opening remarks
Dean Dan Gelo
College of Liberal and Fine Arts

Professor Christopher Wickham
“An Introduction to Talking about Food”

Professor Sandra Gilbert ::: inaugural lecture
“‘All That Is Toothsome?’ : Sacred Food, Deadly Dining.”

7:30 pm ::: reception

Friday, February 22
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session I
Film I ::: panel 1
Judith C. Rodríguez. University of North Florida
“Food and Film: An Analysis of Gender, Status, and Cultural Identity in
What’s Cooking?”
Roberta Di Carmine. Western Illinois University
“Food and Identity Politics: Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s Big
Night (1996)”
Richard Farmer. University of East Anglia
“‘The Honourable Company of Tea Drinkers’: Food, Film and Wartime
Britain”

Friday, February 22
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session I
Identity ::: panel 2
Michelle Johnson Vela. Texas A&M University-Kingsville
“Food as Cultural Signifier in the Literature and Music of U.S. Latinos”
Deborah Israel.
“Ingesting Adversity: Loss, Food, and Ethnic Identity”
Judy E. Perkin. University of North Florida
“The Writings of Erskine Caldwell: Food, Hunger, Nutrient Deficiency,
and Deep South Identity in the Era of the Great Depression”
Stephen Criswell. University of South Carolina
“‘It’s About Sweet Potato Pie’: Narrative Identity through Food in African
American Family Reunions”

Friday, February 22
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session I
Latin America ::: panel 3
Miguel A. Niño. St. Edward’s University
“La comida en la conquista de México: La Malinche, de Laura Esquivel”
Alberto Ameal-Pérez. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
“Juana Manuela Gorriti: Ecléctica y transcultural”

Friday, February 22
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session I
Women Views ::: panel 4
Kirsten Komara.
“The Dialectics of Food: Negotiating Social Bodies and Sexual Desire in Jane Eyre”
Lisa Angelella.
“‘Inwards of Dough’: Virginia Woolf’s Representation of Food and Female Subjectivity”

Friday, February 22
11:00 am-12:30 pm ::: session II
Spanish Perspectives I ::: panel 5
María Jesús Muñoz Jiménez.
“Los caprichos de la literatura: el hambre de Lázaro”
Ana Fernández. SUNY Stony Brook
“Cervantes y El Quijote: la comida como descriptora y diferenciadora de
clases sociales”
Randolph D. Pope. University of Virginia
“Gender and National Representation of Spanish Cooking”

Friday, February 22
11:00 am-12:30 pm ::: session II
Cooking a Path to Home and Self: Food, Longing, and Difference ::: panel 6
Organizer and Chair: Alice Julier. University of Pittsburgh.
Arlene Voski Avakian. University of Massachusetts-Amherst
“Baklava as Home: Exiles and Middle Eastern Cooking in Diana Abu-
Jaber’s Novel Crescent”
Ilona Baughman. Boston University
“‘A Touch of Spice’: Eating, Exile and Identity”
Julia C. Ehrhardt. University of Oklahoma Honors College
“Assimilation through Dieting: Thinness and Jewish American Female
Identity in Fannie Hurst’s Early Short Stories”

Friday, February 22
11:00 am-12:30 pm ::: session II
Woman Parallels Watermelon (The Healing) ::: panel 7
Organizer and Chair: Van G. Garrett
Tony Gaines, Grady Carter, John Gaines, Shunshieva and V. G. Garrett

Friday, February 22
11:00 am-12:30 pm ::: session II
Edible Ideologies I ::: panel 8
Organizer and Chair: Peter Naccarato. Marymount Manhattan College
Annette Cozzi. University of South Florida
“Men and Menus: Dickens and the Rise of the ‘Ordinary’ English
Gentleman”
Celia M Kingsbury. University of Central Missouri
“‘Food Will Win the War’: Food and Social Control in World War I
Propaganda”
Lynne Fallwell. Texas Tech University
“Eating the Enemy: American Tourists, German Food, and the Modern Guidebook”

:::

Friday, February 22
12:30 pm-2:00 pm ::: lunch break

:::

Friday, February 22
2:00 pm-3:30 pm ::: session III
Forms of Food ::: panel 9
Lawrence Schwegler. The University of Texas at San Antonio
“Signs in the Restaurant Menu: Naturalness and Artificiality”
Ame Gilbert. New York University
“Story, Picture, Play: All on the Same Plate”
David Bieloh. Austin Peay State University
“Planned Obsolescence and the Design of Food Consumption”
Mariana Mogilevich. Harvard University
“The Masita Project: Geography and Esthetics of the Petit-Four”

Friday, February 22
2:00 pm-3:30 pm ::: session III
Edible Ideologies II ::: panel 10
Organizer and Chair: Peter Naccarato. Marymount Manhattan College
Charlene Elliot. Carleton University
“Consuming the Other: Packaged Representations of Foreignness in
President’s Choice”
Kathleen Banks Nutter. SUNY at Stony Brook
“From Romance to PMS: Images of Women and Chocolate in 20th Century
America”
Peter Naccarato. Marymount Manhattan College
“Julia Child, Martha Stewart, and the Rise of Culinary Capital”

Friday, February 22
2:00 pm-3:30 pm ::: session III
Literary Food ::: panel 11
Susanne Kimball. The University of Texas at San Antonio
“The Life of Pi: a Bi-polar Discussion about Food”
Cynthia Rostankowski. San Jose State University
“Chocolate Cake, Comfort and Understanding Love in Salley Vickers’
The Other Side of You”
Rebecca Brown
“‘The Camembert is Wonderful’: On Disruptive Dining in Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont”

Friday, February 22
2:00 pm-3:30 pm ::: session III
Reading Meals, Manners and Meaning ::: panel 12
Organizer and Chair: Alice Julier. University of Pittsburgh
Lucy M. Long. Bowling Green State University
“Moonshine, ’Possum and Cornbread: ‘Othering’ Appalachia Through its
Food”
Abby Wilkerson. George Washington University
“Eating Thinking Writing Self: Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable. Miracle in
a First Year Writing Seminar”
Alice P. Julier. University of Pittsburgh
“Meals and Manners in Black and White”

Friday, February 22
4:00 pm-5:30 pm ::: session IV
Practical Matters: Teaching & Such ::: panel 13
Raquel Oxford. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Teaching Social Justice Through Thematic Units: Food Representation in Spanish Children’s Literature”
Heidi Oberholtzer Lee. Messiah College
“Approaches to Teaching Food in Literature and Film”
Marlowe Daly-Galeano. The University of Arizona
Like Water for How to Make Chocolate, or a Dialogue between 20th
Century Food Literature and Contemporary Cookbooks”

Friday, February 22
4:00 pm-5:30 pm ::: session IV
Strife & Hunger ::: panel 14
Ewa Macura. Warsaw School of Social Psychology
“The Politics of Food in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow
Sun.”
Vicente Cano. Morehead State University
“Penuria y nutrición en Emigrantes, de Edward Rosset”
Graciela N.V. Corvalan. Webster University
“Del absurdo al grotesco en tres textos de Virgilio Piñeira (Cuba, 1912-
1974)”

Friday, February 22
4:00 pm-5:30 pm ::: session IV
European Perspectives ::: panel 15
Meg Coyle. Allegheny College
“L’Uomo de Buon Gusto: The Rules of Eating for the 18th Century Italian
as Defined by Vincenzo Corrado and Carlo Goldoni”
Kevin Drzakowski. University of Wisconsin-Stout
“Hungry Are the Not Damned: Hunger as Divine in Dante’s Commedia”
Elena Gutierrez. Catholic University of America
“Consumo y caracterización en los personajes secundarios de Fortunata y
Jacinta”

Friday, February 22
4:00 pm-5:30 pm ::: session IV
Performing Food ::: panel 16
Katarzyna Przyluska.
“The Seductive Power of Eucharistic Food: Flavor and Olfactory Strategies
in The Gospels of Childhood (Zar Theater, Poland) and Inside the Whale´s
Skeleton (Odin Theater, Denmark)”
Maria Park Bobroff. Guilford College
“Gluttonous Pleasures: Arlequin, Sentimentality and 18th Century French
Theater”
Howard S. Meltzer. Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY
“Welcome to ‘StarBach’s”: Bach, the Coffee Cantata and Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse”

Friday, February 22
5:30 pm-6:15 pm ::: Special Session
Naomi Shihab Nye: A San Antonio Poet
Michelle Bonczek.
“Kingdom Between the Teeth: Food and Food Culture in the Poetry of
Naomi Shihab Nye,” followed by
Naomi Shihab Nye reading from her work.

Friday, February 22
6:30 pm-8:00 pm ::: poetry café
Wendy Barker (organizer)
Norma Cantú, Catherine Kasper, Bonnie Lyons, David Ray Vance
and featured reader: Sandra M. Gilbert

: : : :

Saturday, February 23
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session V
Spanish Perspectives II ::: panel 17
Jeffrey Oxford. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Rats and Other ‘Unedibles’: Survival in 20th Century Spain”
Eugene B. Hastings. Morehead State University
“Reflexiones sobre Bécquer y la comida en sus obras”
Ana María González.
“ ‘Al pan, pan y al vino, vino’: la última cena en el contexto literario de La Cristiada”

Saturday, February 23
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session V
Film II ::: panel 18
Gerald Duchovnay, Texas A&M University-Commerce
“Coming out of the Oven: What Do those Cakes and Pastries Hide?”
Barbara Blithe Ware. Keene State College
“ ‘Slice and Dice’--Culinary Delights and Visceral Vices: Pedro
Almodóvar’s Volver”
Matthew C. Stelly. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“The Role of Food and Seating Placement in Major Movies: A
Chronological Assessment”

Saturday, February 23
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session V
Classical World ::: panel 19
Merrianne Timko. Independent Scholar
“Ancient Rome and ‘La cuisine moderne’: Dining with Apicius and
Lucullus in the 19th Century”
Ippokrates Kantzios.
“Ithaca’s Wine and the Return of Odysseus”
Niki Holmes Kantzios. University of South Florida
“Food on the Floor: Edible Emblems in Roman Dining Room Mosaics”

Saturday, February 23
9:00 am-10:30 am ::: session V
Alimentación, arte y literatura entre 1492 y 1615 ::: panel 20
Francisco Marcos Marín. The University of Texas at San Antonio
“La aparición de las plantas comestibles en el arte europeo”.
Amando de Miguel. The University of Texas at San Antonio. Visiting Professor
“Alimentación y sociedad en El Quijote”.
Santiago Daydí-Tolson. The University of Texas at San Antonio
“Sabor y lengua autóctona en el Inca Garcilaso”

Saturday, February 23
11:00 am-1:00 pm ::: session VI
At the Table, On the Table: Food, Etiquette & Sociability in the Western Mediterranean
& Spanish Netherlands, 1360-1660 ::: panel 21
Organizer and Chair: Beth M. Forrest. Boston University
April Najjaj. Greensboro College
“A ‘Mawlid’ Celebration in Muslim Granada: Festival and Food in the 14th Century”
Beth Forrest. Boston University
“‘The Woman is like the Melon’: Food and Etiquette in the Changing
World of Early Modern Spain”
Ken Albala. University of the Pacific
“Ludovicus Nonnius and the Elegance of Fish”
Kathleen M. Anderson. Central Michigan University
“Dining and Writing: Regional Food Poetry in 17th Century Provence”

Saturday, February 23
11:00 am-1:00 pm ::: session VI
Edible Semiotics: Food as a Social Symbolic Act ::: panel 22
David Sabrio.
“‘Let Me Bring Thee Where Crabs Grow’: Food, The Tempest, and European Encounters with the Other”
Pam Wright.
“‘These Absurd Class Distinctions’: Food as Cultural (Dis)Connection in Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party”
Marco Iñiguez Alba. Texas A&M University-Kingsville
“Ritualized Cannibalism as a Response to Spanish Neo-liberalism in
Volver”
Roberto J Vela. Texas A&M University-Kingsville
“Food for Surrealist Thought: Cracking Crabs and Other Hard Headed
Codes”

Saturday, February 23
11:00 am-1:00 pm ::: session VI
The Discourse of Food in Late 19th Century Spain ::: panel 23
Luisa Elena Delgado. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
“‘Comiendo como Dios manda’: el adiestramiento de los placeres en Peñas arriba de
Pereda”
James Mandrell. Brandeis University
“Food as Character in Galdós’ Torquemada Novels”
Lou Charon-Deutsch. Stony Brook University
“A Foodie ‘al pie de la Torre Eiffel’”

Saturday, February 23
11:00 am-1:00 pm ::: session VI
The Novel ::: panel 24
Patrick Kiley. Marian College
“The Architecture of Food in 19th Century French Literature”
Lisa Harris. University of British Columbia
“Representations of Food in Recent Canadian Writing”

Saturday, February 23
1:00 pm ::: Lunch Buffet
Conference Business Issues and Closing Remarks

This conference is made possible in part by a gift from H-E-B

Origin of Chocolate

2007-11-14T18:01:00.000-08:00

The enclosed link leads to a 1998 article on the archeological findings on the consumption of chocolate more than 3,000 years ago.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct98/chocolate.cacao.hrs.html

Food Publication

2007-11-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

The following is a link to a literary magazine devoted to food fiction and poetry. http://www.alimentumjournal.com/contact.html

Corrections to the program and delays

2007-11-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Conference Program posted a few days ago it is only a draft. Some minor changes will be needed between now and the time in December when participants confirm their attendance.

For technical reasons we will be unable to post in the Web page of the conference the registration form until next week.

For the Conference Participants

2007-10-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

As you must have noticed, the program of the 5th Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts has been posted in the previous entry at this, the Conference Blog. Please let us know if the information concerning your participation is incorrect. All participants in the Conference must be registered by Friday, December 14, 2007 to be included in the program. A printable registration form will be available at the Conference Web site, http://flan.utsa.edu/foodconf by Tuesday, November 6.

Your presentation should not exceed twenty minutes of reading time, as you will be part of a panel of three or four presenters and equal time will be allotted for each one.

If you will need audiovisual equipment for your presentation, do not forget to request it on the registration form.

The conference will start late afternoon on Thursday, February 21, and will continue until early afternoon on Saturday, February 23.

If you are interested in seeing your paper published in Convivium Artium, the conference electronic journal, please submit your manuscript electronically no later than March 14, 2008. The third issue of the journal shall be available on the web by the time of the conference.

The Radisson Hotel Market Square is offering a special conference rate of $99.00 plus taxes per night for single or double occupancy. You must contact them soon in order to get this special conference rate. San Antonio’s hotels are regularly booked many weeks in advance, and it will be difficult to find a reasonable rate later. For reservations at the Radisson Hotel Market Square call 1-800-333-3333, or (210) 224-7155 and let them know you are attending the UTSA Department of Modern Languages and Literatures Food Conference. You can also make your reservations on line at http://www.radisson.com/. The hotel’s electronic page can be seen at: www.radisson.com/sanantoniotx .

The Radisson Hotel Market Square is across from the UTSA Downtown Campus, where most conference activities are going to take place. You will have no need for transportation to attend the Conference and to visit the main attractions in downtown San Antonio. From the airport you can take a taxi or a SATrans airport shuttle.

If you need more information, please consult the Conference Web page, the Conference Blog or contact us by phone (210 458-5186), FAX (210 458-5672, e-mail (convivium@utsa.edu) or regular mail (Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. The University of Texas at San Antonio. One UTSA Circle. San Antonio, TX 78249). We are looking forward to having you here in February, and to participate with us in what promises to be a most engaging intellectual meeting.

Santiago Daydi-Tolson
Conference Organizer

Conference Highlights

2007-10-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

The organization of the 5th Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts has been going slowly but steadily. A full program shall be ready and posted here within a week.

At this moment we can announce that the main speaker at the conference inaugural session on Thursday evening, February 21, 2008, will be Professor Sandra Gilbert.

Professor Wendy Barker is preparing a program for the Poetry Cafe that will be open on Friday evening, with an offering of a variety of good poetic readings on food.

The conference will meet al day Friday, Februeary 22, and the morning of Saturday 23. More than seventy speakers will be presenting their research in relation to the artistic use of food by literary authors and filmakers from different countries and periods. From Classical Greece to contemporary film, papers will address the many different uses of food imagery and food themes as significant and aesthetic components of the work of art.

As in previous conferences, participants will have the opportunity to converse with specialists in fields other than their own but equally centered in food as a subject of study and critical discusion.

San Antonio's dowtown amenities, and in special restaurants, should satisfy most participants, as the conference will meet at the downtown campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio, across from the old Market and a few blocks away from the River Walk.

Still Life Exhibit

2007-09-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

Althoug it has already closed, the recent exhibit of "new still life" at the University of Texas at San Antonio deserves attention. The following link takes you to a brief note on the exhibit. http://www.utsa.edu/today/2007/08/stilllife.cfm

Curious learning

2007-09-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

"Curious learning," writes Bertrand Russell in his article 'Useless Knowledge', from his book In Praise of Idleness, "not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of the Han dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them into India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word 'apricot' is derived from the same Latin source as the word 'precocious,' because the apricot ripens aerly; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter."

Call for Papers

2007-09-11T11:48:00.001-07:00

The deadline for sending proposals for papers and sessions for the 5th Conference on Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Arts is coming soon. The response to the call has been encouraging and judging by the quality of the materials submitted we can expect to have a varied and stimulating conference next Spring. In a few days we will be posting here a tentative program for the conference.

On eating Ratatouille

2007-07-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

As art form, the recently released animated film Ratatouille deserves attention for its treatment of food as the subject matter for a story, and for its pictorial representation. The visual aspect of food being prepared, served and consumed is wonderfully treated in an almost continuos series of images that are a delight to the eyes. The carefully realistic depiction of the kitchen of a successful Parisian restaurant acquires at a climatic moment the character of a grandiose, if fantastic, mural that one would have liked to enjoy for a few more seconds. Unfortunately, the art of animation has rarely been used to tell a convincing and intelligent story. In this case there is no exception to the rule, but the quality of the images and the dominant presence of food offer enough pleasure to forget the inane narrative and its trite components. The reference, though, to traditional stories related to food as a symbol are obviously a sign of an artistic approach to a work conceived for popular entertainment. One cannot but remember, if in a fading memory of old black and white animation shorts, the story of the country mouse who does to the big city to visit an urban cousin. Food in abundance and variety unknown to the farm boy, I mean mouse, is seen both as a manifestation of the rich life of the city and of the dangers and difficulties the city folk have to confront in order to be successful. It is the old, rather idealistic story of the underdog who makes it big in spite of all odds. It is the old wife's tale of the happy outcome fed to a society blinded to its defects by the improbable dream of attaining success and happiness by overcoming the same evil forces that define such success. Food, with its strongly sentimental charge works wonders in making the dream a truly convincing one. Back in the reality of the world not beautifully drawn by the artist of computer animation, one cannot but run to the kitchen and prepare a succulent and sentimentally nutritious meal.

Call for Papers

2007-07-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

In February of the year 2000 we hosted at The University of Texas at San Antonio the first interdisciplinary conference on "Food Representation in Literature, Film and the Other Arts". Two years later, encouraged by the excellent response to the conference, we held a second one under the same title. Since then, we have had two more conferences, in 2004 and 2006.

The next conference, the 5th one, will take place in February of 2008. Based on previous experience we count on having many participants addressing a variety of issues related to food and the arts. A Call for Papers was sent to several academic publications and academic departments a few month ago:

5th INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTICULTURAL CONFERENCE ON
FOOD REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, FILM
AND THE OTHER ARTS

San Antonio, Texas
February 21-23, 2008

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
College of Liberal and Fine Arts
The University of Texas at San Antonio

The objective of this interdisciplinary, multicultural conference is to examine, celebrate, and enjoy the variety of ways in which food has been represented in literature and the other arts throughout time and throughout the planet.

Two hundred-word summaries of papers on any aspect of the general theme and written in any of the several languages taught at The University of Texas at San Antonio (English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Japanese) will be considered. Proposals for special panels will also be accepted.

Proposals for individual papers or sessions should be postmarked or e-mailed no later than September 15, 2007 and should be addressed to:
Professor Santiago Daydí-Tolson, Conference Chair
Department of Modern Languages & Literatures
The University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, Texas 78249-0644
e-mail: convivium@utsa.edu

For more detailed and updated information, including previous Conference Programs, and Convivium Artium, the electronic journal on food representation in literature and the arts visit the Conference Web Page: http://flan.utsa.edu/foodconf

###

Today we are beginning this blog as a means to diseminating information about the Conference, and as a site for exchanging ideas on the subject of food as a subject in literature, film and the arts.

In addition, and as indicated in the Call for Papers, we edit an electronic journal or page devoted to the same subject: Convivium Artium, the Banquet of the Arts.