Call for papers: Worlds in a Wine Glass conference

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Abstract proposals due by 15 December 2015 for The Worlds in a Wine Glass: Wine Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences conference.

Conference dates 9 – 10 May 2016
Location Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College London.
Registration A registration fee of £110 (£55 postgraduate students) will cover meals and a program. Non-presentation participants welcome. See the symposium event page for registration details. All participants are asked to contribute a bottle of research-relevant wine to a convivium at the conclusion of the final plenary.
Abstract proposals Due by 15 December 2015
Submission details Submit 250 word abstracts accompanied by 150 word biographical notes to julie.mcintyre@newcastle.edu.au by 15 December 2015. Acceptance of submissions to present papers will be emailed by 15 January 2016. Please advise if you require earlier notification to make travel plans.

As of the 1990s wine grapes are cultivated in a greater diversity of places – and grape wine consumed by a greater number of people – than any other time in history.  This second wave of wine globalisation arose from a confluence of economic, social and cultural factors in the latter part of twentieth century. Whereas the first wave of globalisation in the late nineteenth century resulted from the devastation of European Old World vineyards after biological transmissions of pests and diseases from the New World of the Americas, the second wave has its origins in social revolution and economic change, first in the western world, and more recently in China and other Asian nations. The social and cultural causes and effects of these changes say a great deal about human ambition, desire and identity.

During the recent wave of globalisation, researchers in the humanities and social sciences began to pay more attention to how the production, distribution and consumption of wine as a research lens reveals new understanding of national and local/global identities, changing performances of class and gender, and expressions and sacralisations of micro-environments and place. This symposium explores how current inquiries on wine in the humanities and social sciences intersect with and diverge from food studies, studies of drinks and other forms of alcohol, agricultural/environmental studies and related disciplines such as Business, Geography and Tourism. How can wine studies contribute to related subjects such as food; what are the methodological frames for wine studies? Is it possible to identify critical wine studies as separate from industry development studies of wine, or are convergences inevitable?

Papers are invited – but not limited – to the theme of the worlds in a wine glass: historical worlds, social and cultural worlds; identity-focused worlds; the local, national and global, and; narrative or discursive worlds.  

This two-day event will be structured according to disciplinary panels with an interactive plenary devoted to identifying transdisciplinary commonalties. A keynote presentation by eminent food and beer historian Professor Jeffrey Pilcher, University of Toronto Canada, will provide context for the state of the field of humanities and social scientific wine research.  Presenters will be invited to make submissions for a special issue of Global Food History on Wine to be co-edited by Jeffrey Pilcher and Julie McIntyre.

Download call for papers PDF (733KB)

Contact

  • julie.mcintyre@newcastle.edu.au

Related news