SPECIAL ISSUE: Vol. 59, No. 2, December 2022
Posted on 2022-03-04
Photo credit: Lijesh Karunakaran; Concept: Dr Anitha Devi Pillai; Model: Sumi B Thomas
SPECIAL ISSUE: SARE, Vol. 59, No. 2, December 2022
CALL FOR PAPERS
“Food: Culture, Consumption, and Representation”
Guest Editor: Dr Anitha Devi Pillai
What we eat and won’t eat, food we crave, desire, or abhor, where we will eat or won’t eat, and in fact how much we eat when we eat are all deeply reflective of our heritage, our background, our exposure, and our connection to food, and to the memories that these food items bring to us. Food choices establish and perpetuate boundaries and borders. Food is closely tied to our identity. It has history and it has a story. How we experience food is personal on one level and relatable on many levels to those with whom we share geographical, cultural, and emotional ties.
SARE’s Special Issue on “Food: Culture, Consumption, and Representation” seeks to examine representations of food in literature, film, podcasts, short videos, menus, cartoons, comic strips, exhibits, and any other cultural productions of and from Asia, including its diasporas, that articulate ideas or stories about food. What can Asian-centred narratives and texts tell us about the relationship between language and food? How can Asia as a site of study contribute to discussions in or around food scholarship? In what ways can analyses of food writing and other textual matter from Asia engage debates on postcolonial, gender, and critical race studies? We are seeking insightful and thought-provoking pieces that are methodologically interesting and pay careful attention to the texts under examination.
The following list of topics is meant to be generative of ideas and is neither authoritative nor exhaustive:
- Food and Fantasy
- Food and Power
- Food and Identity
- Food and Desire
- Food and Heritage
- Food and Consumption and Eating Practice
- Food and Addiction
- Food and Rituals
- Food and Travel Writing
- Food and Deviance
- Food and Power
- Food and Religion
- Food and Taboo
- Food and Language
- Multimodal representations of food and storytelling
- Positive and negative connotations of food in literature
Articles & Book Reviews
This SARE thematic call for participation invites scholarly articles, of between 5000 and 7000 words, and book reviews of food fiction novels or anthologies, of between 1000 and 1300 words, that address, but need not be limited to, the above topics.
Abstracts of 200 words (maximum), along with a 50-word author bio, are to be emailed to The Guest Editor, SARE at anitha.pillai@nie.edu.sg with a copy to The Editor, SARE at sare@um.edu.my by 30 April 2022.
Decisions will be sent out by 15 May 2022.
The deadline for the submission of full papers is 31 August 2022. Submissions should be in English and uploaded to the SARE website through the “Make a Submission” portal at https://sare.um.edu.my.
Fiction, Creative-Non-Fiction & Poetry
You are invited to send in food fiction and poetry that address, but need not be limited to, the above topics. Fiction and Creative non-fiction should not be longer than 5000 words.
The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2022. Submissions should be in English and uploaded to the SARE website through the “Make a Submission” portal at https://sare.um.edu.my.
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Further submission guidelines can be found on our website.
Publication date: December 2022
If you have any questions related to the special issue, please direct your inquiries to The Editor, SARE at sare@um.edu.my or anitha.pillai@nie.edu.sg.
About our Guest Editor
Anitha Devi Pillai (Ph.D, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) is Senior Lecturer at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, where she teaches and researches on multi-disciplinary areas related to English language pedagogy (writing component), community literacy studies, academic writing, and creative writing. Dr Pillai is the recipient of three Teaching Awards: Excellence in Teaching Commendation 2018 from NIE and Teaching Merit Awards from the Singapore University of Social Sciences in 2013 and 2014.
Dr Pillai’s research on the Singapore Malayalee community was supported by a National Heritage Board (Singapore) grant and resulted in the publication of From Kerala to Singapore: Voices from the Singapore Malayalee Community (2017). She was awarded the Pravasi Express Research Excellence Award in 2017 for this study.
Dr Pillai has also authored and edited creative and non-creative fiction books. She has also translated a historical fiction novel, Sembawang: A Novel (2020), from Tamil into English. The novel was shortlisted for the Singapore History Prize by the National University of Singapore and as Best Literary Work by the Singapore Book Publishers Association. Her poems have made their way into classrooms in Singapore, India, Australia, and the Philippines. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies including The Best Asian Short Stories 2019, Letter to My Son (2020) and Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (2020). Much of her work explores themes of identity, heritage, and culture. She also serves as Co-Director of the 16th International Conference on the Short Story in English and Editor for the prose (fiction) section of the new literary journal, Practice, Research and Tangential Activities (PR&TA). She is currently working on a collection of short stories focusing on food and love.