Call for papers - Special issue 14/2024 - Reading Food in Literature, the Arts and across the Media

Cultural Intertexts, academic journal of Literature and Cultural Studies, ISSN 2393-0624, E-ISSN 2393-1078, invites proposals of original articles, related to the theme: “Reading Food in Literature, the Arts and across the Media”.

With the rise of information technology over the past decades, the multi-faceted field of food studies has been growing in popularity, a trend also visible in the literary and cultural studies dealing with gastronomic representations.

Apart from food symbolism and mythology, cooking and eating habits, feasting and fasting, critics have become engaged with more modern issues, like: depictions of translocal and global appetites; contested tastes where cultures clash; postcolonial digestions of foreignness; culinary heritages at home and abroad; criticism of consumerism; metaphors of fast-food, slow-food, street food and food delivery; more and more complex food systems; food safety and environmental ethics; illustrations of eating disorders and diets; meanings of healing food; the impact of famine or of dining out on individuals and societies; culinary fictions and food plots; familiar and weird foods, etc.

Moreover, the beginning of the twenty-first century has arrived with an increased interest in ecological concerns, some of them associated not only with the production and consumption of food and drinks, but also with waste recycling and the urgent need to rethink how nourishment circulates in societies and nature, between individuals and between continents.

As a result, these trends have influenced contemporary narratives – literature, the arts and the different media – and have determined writers, artists and communicators to pay closer attention to how they represent such aspects in their work and in relation to large communities.

Furthermore, since translation means mediation between cultures, this domain plays a significant role in making food production, consumption and recycling practices travel across various borders and become visible to different audiences. Terminological, lexicological, lexicographical and intersemiotic debates about them often aim to clarify meanings and usage, remodel perceptions and produce cultural change and innovation.

With this context in mind, researchers are invited to explore how literature, visual arts and the media reflect attitudes, behaviours and mentalities associated with contemporary and earlier foodways approached from a critical point of view.

Guest editors: Monica Manolachi and Lorena Mihăeș, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest

Please send your abstract proposals (title, abstract and 5 keywords) to cultural.intertexts [at] gmail.com, monica.manolachi [at] lls.unibuc.ro and lorena.mihaes [at] lls.unibuc.ro by 15 March 2024. Full papers are expected by 10 May 2024.

Every manuscript is single-blind peer-reviewed by two senior researchers or academics. The authors will be notified of the editorial decision in 90 days.

The journal is published yearly, in December.

A €30 fee is payable once the article has been accepted for publication. It includes worldwide shipping of the printed volume.

The journal is indexed by SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS, EBSCO, ProQuest, CEEOL, Index Copernicus, MLA, Open Aire and DOAJ.

Cultural Intertexts uses The Coventry University Guide to Referencing in Harvard Style.