Graduate Student Symposium: Redefining the Welcome Table
Redefining the Welcome Table: Inclusion and Exclusion in American Foodways
Southern Foodways Alliance and William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation
University of Mississippi
September 25-26, 2014
Click here for a full conference schedule.
Together with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, the Southern Foodways Alliance will host a graduate student conference at the University of Mississippi to study inclusion and exclusion in American Foodways.
This past summer, the country marked the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which desegregated places of public accommodation. The role of foodways has historically been overlooked as a centerpiece in discussions about justice and equity. This conference, which hosts graduate students from across the country, attempts to rectify that. Academic panels will explore foodways in several contexts: its use to sustain oppressive structures and ideologies; its role as a hopeful pathway to eliminating inequity and historical blindness; and, finally, its meaningfulness in revealing pride in identity and building bridges across differences.
Bartow J. Elmore, author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism, will be the keynote speaker for the conference. His book explores the ways Coca-Cola built a global empire, and the effects of that empire on cultures, environments, and economies.
Attendance is free and open to the public. The keynote lecture will take place in the Tupelo Room in Barnard Observatory; all other talks will be held at the Oxford Depot, behind the Gertrude Ford Center. Click here for the schedule of events. For more information, email info@southernfoodways.org.