Thursday, August 28, 2008

A cup of tea

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.


Monday, February 25, 2008

Conference mentioned at "The Splendid Table"

"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

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Postprandial Musings

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.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Conference Announcements

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

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