[ecrea] call for submissions - Food, Fermentation, and Feminism

*CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS *
“LEAVENING THE CONVERSATION: intersections of food, fermentation, and 
feminism”

Saturday September 30 – Sunday October 1

_deadline for abstracts & proposals WEDNESDAY August 16, 2017 _

We are pleased to announce the inaugural Intersections of Food, 
Fermentation, and Feminism conference, to be held over the weekend of 
September 30 – October 1, 2017, at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, 
and Feminist Studies (IGSF) of McGill University. This two day, 
bilingual event will bring together scholars and makers with the goal of 
integrating the thinking and doing of fermentation.

At this time, we invite abstracts for paper presentations as well as 
proposals for panel discussions, workshops, galleries, and 
demonstrations. Details on submissions can be found below.

Feel free to distribute this notice widely to whomever you think might 
be interested. Please direct all inquiries to 
writemayaAnote[at]gmail[dot]com.**We look forward to hearing from you.

- conference organizers

—

Food is a medium. Like conventional examples of media, food carries both 
content and relational messages that are produced, distributed, and 
consumed frequently and widely. As content, foods are the literal 
vehicles for delivering messages that are subsequently decoded and 
digested into meaningful units. Once absorbed, food-as-content can then 
be repurposed and mobilized by bodies, recirculating nutrients where 
needed. Fermented foods, in particular, act as a medium that interfaces 
between humans, microbes, and microbial foods. As a transformative 
process, fermentation incorporates multiple species, multiple senses, 
and multiple scales. As a metaphor, it operates as a productive figure 
for speculation and experimentation. Fermented foods also carry meaning 
and, as such, play into the relational and identity politics of the 
everyday eater. Here, a feminist lens provides a complex understanding 
of how the material and the discursive are constructed in and through 
food rituals, performatives, and customs. Where heteronormative 
ideologies dictate and prescribe, feminism and fermentation are grounded 
in the affective, the sensorial, and the peripheral. Thus, food, 
fermentation, and feminism literally and metaphorically figure into each 
other.

We follow McLuhan’s broad interpretation of a medium to mean “that 
[which] shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and 
action” (McLuhan, 1964, p.2). Based on this lenient definition of a 
medium: How do food and ferments mediate and (re)negotiate questions of 
access, subversion, transformation, and agency? How can fermentation 
render alternative modes of mediating and processing? How do feminist 
accounts of the body or feminist modes of care shape scholarly work in 
food and/or ferments? How can the applied work of makers and mediators, 
coupled with the theoretical work of scholars fabulate a more plural and 
just future? How do food, fermentation, and feminism fold into one another?

At the core of each of these domains --food, fermentation, and 
feminism-- are binaries that animate dominant paradigms and power 
structures. Food is characterized by good/bad aesthetics, health/junk 
parameters, gourmet/street, and conventional/organic ideologies. 
Fermentation deals with human/nonhuman, self/other, and mind/body 
dualisms. Lastly, feminism is equally haunted by gender binaries, 
public/private spheres, productive/reproductive labor, affect/intellect, 
though many feminist scholars are actively collapsing these to propose 
alternate framings. We ask the question, */what are the intersections 
between fermentation and feminism? How can material and discursive 
shifts in gender, germination, and gastronomy be leavened with the type 
of complexity that supports social change? /*

Some topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  * foods performing feminism, or vice versa
  * fermentation as a feminist intervention
  * transformative media
  * intersectionality and ferments
  * the gendering of food/ferments
  * notions of gender/contamination
  * nourishment and/or feminist notions of care
  * bodies as unbound and porous
  * microbial agency and relational politics
  * heteronormativity and ferments
  * disruptive mediations
  * ferments and questions of scale
  * food, fermentation, and intimacy
  * gustatory/sexual consumption
  * food, participation, and agency
  * circulation of affect in food movement
  * food activism and materiality
  * radical media and microbes
  * changing gender roles over who is brewing/ fermenting/ performing
    this labor
We welcome abstracts/proposals from a variety of fields, including 
communication studies, gender studies, cultural studies, history, 
anthropology, sociology, English, art, political science philosophy, 
life sciences, as well as other disciplines. We hope to gather ideas 
from a broad geographic range. Submissions can be in English and in French.

Additionally, a select number of papers presented at the conference will 
be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

*Please send an abstract (250 - 500 words) along with a brief biography 
(100 words) to by **filling out this form.* 
<https://goo.gl/forms/EpupKLVZUwnOTcku2>
(or if you have technical difficulties *writemayaAnote *[at] *gmail 
*[dot] *com)*

**

*Proposals for pre-organized panel discussions, workshops, and 
demonstrations should include a summary (500 words), description of 
participants (100 words per speaker), as well as a proposed schedule.*

**

*_deadline for abstracts & proposals Wednesday August 16, 2017 _*



_Conference Organizers_

Alex D. Ketchum, PhD candidate Department of History, McGill University

Maya Hey, PhD student Department of Communication Studies, Concordia 
University

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