Edible Feminisms: On Discard, Waste, and Metabolism

 

Edible Feminisms: On Discard, Waste, and Metabolism is a project organized by CSW Adjunct Assistant Professors Sarah Tracy and Rachel Vaughn.

Edible Feminisms is a project in three parts:

This project was inspired by Dr. Kyla Wazana Tompkins‘ framing of “critical eating studies” in her award-winning Racial Indigestion (New York University Press, 2012) and reflects on the ways in which American Studies, Food Studies, Sensory Studies, Science & Technology Studies, and Postcolonial Studies are speaking to one another. Through the promptings of food science popularization, culinary tourism, food waste, sustainability, and access debates, questions of race, identity, and pleasure are currently as germane as the science of obesity/diabetes, allergy, and chemical exposure. Rather than separate such strands, we wish to forward the proposition of “critical eating studies” through explorations of the theme of Re(Value). How do individuals, companies, and policy-makers deploy science (e.g., evolutionary, genetic, molecular) to do the work of differentiation—where differentiation is an expression of value, whether ethnic, cultural, distinction, or brand? How do such actors center science in their route to positive futures? In other words, how is latent capacity transformed into new sources of value and to what benefit, and through which kinds of violence? How does making explicit the materiality, politics, and symbolism of eating (a mutual, subjective, and intractable affair), as feminist and queer critical practice, help illuminate such questions and to what ends?


Food, Culture, and Society Special Issue Contributors

Nadia Berenstein, University of Pennsylvania
Joel Dickau, University of Toronto
Daniel Gerling, Augustana University
Anthony Ryan Hatch, Wesleyan University
Hi’ilei Hobart, Northwestern University
Victoria Lee, Ohio University
Christy Spackman, Harvey Mudd College
Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Pomona College
Michelle Yates, Columbia College

Author biographies and article titles


Writing Workshop and Labs

 Contributors to the special issue of Food, Culture, and Society will participate in a private writing workshop in February, 2018.


Public Panel

CSW invites all members of our community to join us for a public panel featuring:

DATE: February 1, 2018
TIME: 4:00 – 6:00 PM, with reception to follow
LOCATION: Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center, UCLA
Free and open to the public.

Details and registration information


Co-sponsored by:

Luskin Endowment for Thought Leadership

Division of Humanities

Luskin School of Public Affairs

Food Studies Graduate Certificate Program

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Institute of American Cultures

Iris Cantor – UCLA Women’s Health Center

Asian American Studies Center

Department of African American Studies

Department of History

Department of Asian American Studies

Department of Gender Studies

Institute for Society and Genetics

Backed by Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Division of Social Sciences