This panel invites papers that examine the role of food, eating, and hunger in 19th-century Italian and European literature and culture, in particular, from an Ecofeminist perspective. The panel asks these questions: how do food, eating, and hunger, for example, in Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and many other works, elide gender and/or species constructs? Does such an elision reflect the construction of nation? How do food paradigms, hierarchies, and consumption reinforce or challenge the androcentric and anthropocentric thinking of dominant culture during industrialization and unification? Although food, eating, and the status of animals have become the subject of vigorous, critical inquiry in contemporary Italian and American culture (for example, Mad Cow Disease, Foodism, the Slow Food Movement, and Vegetarianism) and consumption and cannibalism have sparked rich, academic debate in postcolonial studies, the realm of the alimentary is seldom approached in 19th-century literature as a construct of species or from an Ecofeminist viewpoint. Various critical and theoretical approaches and methodologies, including cross-cultural viewpoints, are welcome. Readings of noncanonical texts are also encouraged.

Send one-page abstract via e-mail only by Sept. 15, 2008 to: delprinciped@mail.montclair.edu