CFP: Food and Instagram

Emily Contois and I are co-editing a volume on food and Instagram, and we
invite chapter proposals by April 1. Please share this CFP with colleagues
who might be interested, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any
questions.

You Are What You Post: Food and Instagram

In the beginning, critics pegged Instagram as the site for polaroid-shaped
pictures of brunch and babies. Its presumed whiteness, feminization, and
superficial consumerism have been slow to draw sustained scholarly
attention compared with Facebook and Twitter, despite the fact that by
mid-2018, the image-based social media platform had topped one billion
users worldwide. Now an extensive and heterogeneous visual ecosystem,
Instagram’s unique relations between food and media—and the broader
cultural significance of these dynamics—warrant critical scrutiny.

How does the “social photography” (Manovich 2014) of Instagram mediate
ideas about food, eating, health, and nutrition? How does food intersect
with diverse performances of identity, including celebrity, in the digital
vernacular of posting photos with significant frequency? Considering more
than 70% of American businesses are estimated to engage with the platform,
how does the visual economy of Instagram participate in and reshape food
and restaurant brand development and marketing? How does Instagram’s rapid
global expansion reflect and reshape visual geographies of food and eating?
Exploring these and other questions, this volume will bring together food
and media studies scholars to cast an interdisciplinary lens on what we
learn about the cultures and economies of food through the Instagram frame.

We seek contributors for focused, lively, and engaging chapters on the
topic of food and Instagram. The volume will be peer-reviewed and has
received interest from Bloomsbury Academic, a leading publisher of works on
food <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/academic/academic-subjects/food/>. The
press affords a growing list of texts in Food Media and Communication
<https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/academic/academic-subjects/food/food-media-and-communication/>,
bolstered by the Bloomsbury Food Library
<https://www.bloomsburyfoodlibrary.com/home>, which affords space for
pedagogical components suitable for both undergraduate and graduate course
adoption.

Potential chapter topics include, but are not limited to:

   - Food porn on and through Instagram
   - Restaurants, food brands, and marketing
   - Taste, reviews, expertise, and criticism
   - Social status, aspiration, and mobility
   - Nutrition, nutritionism, “healthy” eating, and food tracking
   - Digital worlds, data, surveillance, and technology
   - Instagram and the construction of identity and the self
   - Generational considerations and impacts
   - Consumption, diet(ing), and influencers
   - Convergence, transgression, and Instagram aesthetics
   - Globalization, transnationalism, and circulation
   - Instagram, community, and isolation
   - Instagram users and uses in the Global South
   - Representations of farming, agriculture, and food landscapes
   - Activism, resistance, and other potentials of food Instagram
   - Food and online toxicity
   - Instagram and pedagogy

If you are interested in submitting a chapter to this edited volume, please
send a 300-word abstract and 150-word bio to co-editors, Emily Contois
(emily-contois [at] utulsa.edu) and Zenia Kish (zenia-kish [at] utulsa.edu),
by April 1, 2019. Contributors will be notified of preliminary acceptance
by May 1, 2019. Chapters of 5,000-6,000 words, inclusive of notes and
bibliography, will be due September 1, 2019. These are firm deadlines, so
we ask that contributors please plan accordingly.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact either or both
of the editors. We genuinely look forward to receiving your proposals.
Shareable CFP link:
https://emilycontois.com/2019/02/18/cfp-food-and-instagram/?fbclid=IwAR0NSXgEiitLkYUoQVBIpjsQoQ00ShZ0dSvVsHYRi9WFpV2JCP3MADzSpn4

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