Food, drink and civilization - 21-22/09/2016, London (England)

The conference will adopt a cross-cultural, inclusive and multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing in scholars from sociology, anthropology, history, theatre, philosophy, literature and art, in order to enhance our understanding of the ways in which human engagement with food and drink, in terms of production and consumption, use and abuse, aesthetics and ethics, rhetoric and politics, shape their sense of self and other, and order and define their world. In exploring points of convergence and divergence across different times and cultures it will raise questions about what we mean by civilisation and whether there can ever be a single core model. Themes for papers which we envisage are: Food and religion: divine and human food; diets; taboos and abstentions; purity and impurity; feasts (human, divine and shared) and feast days. Food and drink in social contexts: commensality; friendship and bonding; models of sharing; organisation of space; public and private; segregation. The politics of food and drink: patronage; control, reward and dependency; hierarchies; canvassing; civic duty and largesse; foodstuffs, colonisation and conquest. The economics of food: food and trade; concepts of display; luxury; delicacies; costs and value. The pragmatics and technology of food and drink: preparation; training; expertise; standing and reward. The erotics/aesthetics of food and drink; food/drink as aphrodisiac; as art, visual and culinary. The ethics of food: food and drink as markers of value(s), individual or collective; cultural difference; excess and moderation; order and control; social change; disorder, decline and fragmentation. Law, crime and abuse: legal and other restrictions, cannibalism, poison. Food and drink in/as myth: as charter, as warning, as symbol.

FECHA/ DATE/DATA: 21-22/09/2016

LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: University College London (London, England)

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE:

INFO: Chris Carey ; Dr Kaori O’Connor tzu-i.liao.10@ucl.ac.uk

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: aquí /here/ qui

- Standard: 20£

- Estudiante/student/estudente: 15£

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA: disponible aquí / available here / disponibile qui:

21 September

9.00-10.00 Registration and coffee, welcome

10.00 Opening Lecture. ANDREW DALBY: Food before and after civilisation

11.00 CoffeE

11.30 SESSION 1: TASTE, TABOO AND AVOIDANCE

11.30 MICHAEL BEER I’m not putting that in my mouth: confounding culinary expectations at Roman aristocratic banquets

12.00 ANTONIA MATALAS, ALEXANDRA FFOSKOLOU and IOANNIS STAVRIDIS The sweet taste of blood. Blood as food in Greek cultures

12.30 ATSUKO ICHIJO Is eating whale meat barbaric?: The whaling/whale meat problem and competing normative frameworks

13.00 MARYLIN NICOUD Food risk in medical medieval thought

13.30-14.30 LUNCH

14.30 SESSION 2: EMPIRE

14.30 CHRISTINE HASTORF The foodcraft of the Inka state; simple, standard, and relentless

15.30 CHRISTOPHER TUPLIN Feeding the King of Kings: organisation and ideology

16.00 SAMI ZUBAIDA Foodscapes in the Post-Ottoman world

16.30 TEA

17.00 - 18.00 PAUL BUELL The Mongols, food and cultural exchange

EVENING RECEPTION AND BUFFET

22 September

9.00 SESSION 3: IDENTITY AND THE OTHER

9.00 MIRA GREEN Hunger and indigestion: class and marginality through dietary practices in Roman literature

9.30 DAVID LEW A culinary perspective on Roman ethnography: the eating and drinking habits of the foreign people in Roman historiography

10.00 JESSICA ROMNEY Bekos: food and notions of civilisation in ancient Greek literature

10.30 VENETIA CONGDON Food in Catalan nationalism

11.00 COFFEE

11.30 SESSION 4: RELIGION AND RITUAL

11.30 ESTHER EIDINOW Consuming narratives: the politics of cannibalism on Mt. Lykaion

12.00 SUSAN WEINGARTEN What the rabbis ate: ancient Jewish food in its geographical and cultural contexts

12.30 ROEL STERCKX Feeding the living and the dead in early China

13.30-14.30 LUNCH

14:30 SESSION 5: DRINK

14.30 JON D. HOLTZMAN The space within the foam: “white space” and the culinary imagination in Japanese beer

15.00 AMALIA LEJAVITZER Fruit wines: medicinal tonics or luxury drinks?

15.30 MELISSA SHARP Creating difference in the 3rd millennium BC: drinking cultures in the Syrian Jezirah

16.00 TEA

16.30 SESSION 6: COMMENSALITY

16.30 STEVEN HODGES/AMY MILLER Consuming the ‘East’: globetrotters, food, drink and sociability on the eastern grand tour 1870-1900

17.00 FRANCESCA GRAZIOLI Roma communities in Italy: the table as a formative space between the self and the community

EVENING RECEPTION AND BUFFET

23 September

10.30 COFFEE

SESSION 7: EROTICS, SEDUCTION AND GENDER

11.00 MOLLY B. HUTT The way to one’s heart is through the stomach: the cuisine of romantic temptation in Theocritus’ Idylls

11.30 COFFEE

12. 00 NANETTE O’BRIEN Civilisation in the archives: Virginia Woolf and the legacy of institutional food in A Room of One’s Own

12.30 LUNCH AND CLOSING PAPER

RACHEL KARASIK "Table for Two" - the intimacy of the shared meal

13.00 CLOSING REMARKS