Our conference intends to look at the history of the relationship between food and urban populations in ways that may inform our future food systems. More broadly, we will consider food history as an emerging field that brings together scholarship from disciplines such as history, economics, environmental science, technology, anthropology, politics, geography, and archeology. We seek papers that investigate consumer practices, but also encourage proposals that examine the movement of food to and from cities, suppliers and processors, and markets.
What factors shape the transport, storage and delivery of food to cities? How has the supply and storage process changed? How do markets reflect particular social and economic traditions? What influences popular food behavior and attitudes in different cities? Two keynote speakers, Dr. Ken Albala from the University of the Pacific, and Dr. Warren Belasco from the University of Maryland at Baltimore will provide their views of the history of urban food systems from their respective disciplines. Dr. Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. He is the author of many books on food including Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet, Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 IACP Jane Grigson Award), and Pancake. Dr. Belasco Warren Belasco is a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. He is the author of Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food (University of California Press, 2006), Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (Pantheon Books, 1989; Cornell University Press, 1993, 2007), and Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945 (MIT Press, 1979).
Send a three hundred word abstract and CV by October 1, 2011 to Robyn Metcalfe at history@bu.edu
Send a three hundred word abstract and CV by October 1, 2011 to Robyn Metcalfe at history@bu.edu