Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Flavor pervades the fabric of modern life. It consists of a constellation of meanings as it is variously construed as a cognitive output, a technological product, a neurological response and a metaphor for quotidian experience. Flavor is also part of a multi-billion dollar industry in food flavor and fragrance manufacturing. The advent of mass produced packaged food has turned the question of flavor not merely as a biological process, a personal idiosyncrasy or choice but also as a valuable commodity involving enormous economic resources and mass appeal as well as a vital metaphor in understanding everyday exigencies. The English language has a rich treasure trove of words that revolve around flavor. Flavors do not only refer to embodied experiences of food but they are used to describe a wide variety of human experiences. We use idioms of flavor to evaluate and describe these various experiences from the pleasurable to the tragic, from the bitter to the sweet. This multivalent nature of flavor frames this meeting of scientists and humanists as a capacious interdisciplinary investigation of this phenomena in the face of interconnected and overlapping cultural, scientific, embodied, and economic spheres in social life. Despite divergent methodologies, theories and interpretative regimes between the various fields, this symposium aims to open up possible spaces for collaboration and future conversations between the sciences and the humanities.