Religion and Food Unit

This Group provides an opportunity for scholars to engage in the intersection of religion and food, foodways, and food ethics. We are interested in examining these topics across broad geographical areas, religious traditions, and historical eras. We seek papers investigating practices and beliefs related to food, drink, fasting, the production of food, the ethics of production and consumption, or on any aspect of religiously influenced foodways.

For possible co-sponsorship with the African Religions and/or African Diaspora Religions Units:

Recognizing our location in borderlands Texas, we invite papers considering geographically relevant topics such as:

• religion and food in the Texas, Mexican, Latin American, Indigenous, and borderlands Latinx communities
• meat, barbecue, meat-eating, and alternative meat
• religion and food in relation to land, water, agriculture, and those who work the land, often migrant workers
• the consumption of peyote, ayahuasca, and other ethnobotanical/entheogenic/psychedelic substances

More broadly, we welcome papers on topics such as religion and food in relation to:

• healing and ethnomedicine
• control, power, agency, and struggle
• gender and sexuality
• food and the spirit world

For a possible co-sponsored session, the Religion and Food unit and Comparative Study of Religion unit invite proposals on religion, food, agriculture, land, and those who work the land, including migrant, low-wage, child, injured, or enslaved workers. For example, sabbatical and jubilee traditions structure restorative rest for bodies and land. Additionally, traditional ecological, embodied, and place-based knowledge systems shape dynamic interactions between people, food, and lands.  Such knowledge systems may be responsive to disruptions to local land, waterway, and climate. Paper and panel proposals for this co-sponsored session should be sent by email to Dr. Roberta Sabbath, roberta.sabbath@unlv.edu, rather than using PAPERS.

Food, faith, Ritual, and Celebration at the Border [a Pre-formed Panel, not accepting submissions]

Co-sponsorship between the Religion and Food, African Diaspora Religions, African Religions, and Comparative Study of Religion units will internally select panelists for a panel theme on religion, food, agriculture, land, and those who work the land, including migrant, low-wage, child, injured, or enslaved workers.

For example, sabbatical and jubilee traditions structure restorative rest for bodies and land. Additionally, traditional ecological, embodied, and place based knowledge systems shape dynamic interactions between people, food, and lands.  Such knowledge systems may be responsive to disruptions to

local land, waterway, and climate.

As always, we welcome general proposals on the topic of religion and food.