The Graduate Student Conference, held in partnership with the Center for the Study of Southern Culture (CSSC) and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, offers a unique experience for graduate students in a variety of disciplines to present their research in food studies.

This year’s eighteen presenters hail from universities across the United States, including the University of Mississippi, Louisiana State University, University of Maine, Florida State University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Washington University. Six panels, moderated by the SFA, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of English faculty and staff, cover topics including documentary film, social histories of foods, farm policy, transient and transnational Souths and food and literature.  A seventh panel will consist of the SFA’s filmmaker and oral historian exploring documentary work for both popular and academic audiences.

Kyla Tompkins, associate professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies will deliver the conference’s keynote talk. She is the author of Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. Tompkins will speak on Monday evening, September 10, at 6 p.m. in the Tupelo Room in Barnard Observatory. The talk is free and open to the public.

Monday and Tuesday’s panels will take place in the Depot (101 Depot St. Small building in parking lot behind the Ford Center). All are welcome. Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff with an interest in food studies are especially encouraged to attend.