The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and the Southern Foodways Alliance, two University of Mississippi institutes, announce a graduate student symposium, focused on the theme of Women, Work, and Food. The conference will take place September 12th – 13th, 2013, on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Mississippi.

Dr. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders of Emory University will present the symposium’s keynote lecture. Her publications include Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory. Dr. Wallace-Sanders’s is also the editor of the anthology Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture.

The symposium will function as an important bridge to the 16th Southern Foodways Symposium, scheduled for October 4-6 at the University of Mississippi and focused on the same theme.

We welcome innovative proposals from graduate students that interrogate the conference’s theme through lenses such as economics, health and nutrition, history, labor, race, sexuality, ethnicity, the marketplace, identity construction, representations of the body in popular culture, and notions of space and place in both transnational and regional contexts.

Individuals from the fields of Anthropology, American Studies, History, Southern Studies, Visual Culture, Cinema Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, Literary Studies, Food Studies including Health and Nutrition, Economics, Hospitality, Labor Studies and Cultural Studies are encouraged to respond to the call. All disciplines are welcome to submit.

Submissions sent to sfa.isom.gradconf@gmail.com should include a working paper title, an abstract limited to 300 words, a current one-page CV and contact information. Panel proposals should include a one-page summary for the panel.

Please indicate technology needs, such as PowerPoint or DVD. Proposals are due by May 31, 2013. Acceptance notifications will be sent out on July 1, 2013.