This conference will be held online, so please be sure to RSVP here
Religion on the Plate is an online graduate student conference organised by the RGSA of the Department of Religion, Columbia University.
Agenda
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Panel I: Resilience and Reclamation
8:30 – 8:50 | Kevin Whitesides – “No Pork on the Fork, No Pig in the Pan, No Swine of Any Kind: Religious Foundations of Anti-Porcine Sentiments in Hip Hop” 8:50 – 9:10 | Mirfa K S – “From Table to Screen: Food in the Narratives of Identity and Resistance” 9:10 – 9:30 | A’Dorian Murray-Thomas – “Soul Food Theologies: Womanist Waymaking in Food Justice” 9:30 – 10:00 | Discussant Comments and Q&A
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Panel II: Non-Human and Human Relationships
10:15 – 10:35 | Izaak Hecht – “Thacker and Ngai: Cooking as Theological Site of Economic Production” 10:35 – 10:55 | Vivienne Tailor – “Competing Brutalities in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007): Power Dynamics in Food, Translation, and Post/humanism” 10:55 – 11:15 | Su Hyeon Cho – “May He Go to Heaven”: Raising Sacrifice at Home 11:15 – 12:00 | Discussant Comments and Q&A
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Panel III: Labor, Commodification, and Consumption
10:15 – 10:35 | Aadi Sardesai – “Can Ukadiche Modak Defeat The American Empire & Why Avocados Are Necessary for Ram Rajya: Food Atavism, Fascism and Neoliberalism in India” 10:35 – 10:55 | Kuzhali Jaganathan – “Temple Prasadams as Cultural Goods: Location, Law & Religion” 10:55 – 11:15 | Roland Chen – “Ritual and Mechanization: Dumpling-Making and the Politics of Labor and Intimacy” (Participatory performance piece – instructions to be shared soon) 11:15 – 12:00 | Discussant Comments and Q&A
12:50 PM – 2:35 PM
Panel IV: Gendered Gastropolitics
12:50 – 1:10 | Muhsina Najeeb – “Sacred Flavors: Food, Memory, and Spiritual Healing in the Perveen Mistry Series” 1:10 – 1:30 | Kate Whitaker – “Mother’s Milk, Curdled: Gender, Religion, and Cheese Graters in the Ancient Mediterranean” 1:30 – 1:50 | Julian Armand-Cook – “Enter A New World of Dining Pleasure: The Nation of Islam, Shabazz Restaurants, and the Gastro-Politics of Religio-Racial Identity” 1:50 – 2:35 | Discussant Comments and Q&A
12:50 PM – 2:35 PM
Panel V: Caste and Culinary Contestations
12:50 – 1:10 | C. S. Samanwaya – “Food Vlogs in Bengal: An Enquiry on Gaze through Caste and Power Relations” 1:10 – 1:30 | Antonette Riana C – “Subversive Gastropolitics: Tamil Dalit Culinary Narratives in Context” 1:30 – 1:50 | Abhirami S. – “Decoding Blood Delicacies and Caste Hierarchy: A Reading of Select Indian Narratives” 2:10 – 2:35 | Discussant Comments and Q&A
2:45 PM – 4:30 PM
Closing Plenary Session
Prof. Jon Keune is a scholar of religion, social history, and transregionalism working especially in western India, Taiwan, and Japan. His book, “Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India” explores how people in western India wrestled for centuries with two competing values: a theological vision that God welcomes all people, and the social hierarchy of the caste system. Prof. Keune examines the ways in which food and stories about food were important sites where this debate played out, particularly when people from varied caste communities ate together.
