Foodways of the Greater Gulf

From the Yucatán Peninsula to the Florida Keys, the many cultures of the greater Gulf have flavored the region with their distinctive cuisines and foodways. Since the emergence of hunting-gathering at the end of the last ice age, Indigenous peoples of the region adapted to a range of environments, culling and domesticating plant and animal food sources from coastal bays and estuaries, marshes and bayous, “big thicket” woodlands and pine forests. In doing so, they developed new cultures, worldviews, and trade networks. The incursions of Europeans, Africans, and Asians into the greater Gulf brought unfamiliar food cultures that in some cases supplanted Native traditions, but more often fused with each other to make something new. Into the present, foodways continue to illuminate the cultural contact zone of the greater Gulf, providing scholars with an opportunity to investigate the intersections of food, geography, history, industry, and culture.

The Center for History and Culture of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast will convene an interdisciplinary symposium at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, on March 31 and April 1, 2025, to consider the foodways of the greater Gulf and publish this work in a themed issue of The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record. Topics on food cultures may include but are not limited to studies in animal history, agriculture, environment, food production and industry, labor, immigration, ethnic cuisine, folkways, hospitality, literature and food writing, and many others. 

Dr. Carrie Helms Tippen of Chatham University will serve as Symposium Chair. In addition to assisting the Center with selecting Fellows and participating in the workshops, she will give a keynote talk. Professor Helms Tippen is the author of Inventing Authenticity: How Cookbook Writers Redefine the South (2018), Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks (2025), and numerous scholarly articles and poetry about Southern food culture.   

The Center invites paper proposals from established and emerging scholars, practitioners, preservationists, and curators who actively seek intersections between food studies, anthropology, communications, ethnicity and race, gender, history, literature, and other fields of study. The Center and The Record encourage projects with a Southeast Texas focus and welcomes those that conceive of the greater Gulf in regional, national, and international terms.

To apply, submit a 300-word proposal for a single paper and a brief c.v. (2 pages maximum) by November 1, 2024. Symposium Fellows will commit to submitting drafts for pre-circulation by March 1, 2025, and participate in the events and workshops in person on March 31 and April 1, 2025. They will share their work in a manuscript workshop with the other Fellows, Center-affiliated faculty, and a small number of invited scholars. Fellows will also prepare posters that provide an overview of their projects at a public reception. After the symposium, Fellows will revise their papers and submit final drafts of about 8,000 to 10,000 words (notes included) by July 1, 2025, for peer review and possible publication in The Record.

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Dates:

by November 1, 2024
Submit a 300-word proposal for a single paper and a brief c.v. (2 pages maximum)

by March 1, 2025
Symposium Fellows will submit drafts for pre-circulation.

on March 31 and April 1, 2025
Symposium Fellows will convene at Lamar University, share their work in a brief presentation, and workshop it with other participants, Center-affiliated faculty, and a small number of invited scholars.

by July 1, 2025
After the symposium, participants will revise their papers and submit final drafts of about 8,000-10,000 words (notes included) for peer review.

The Center will provide lodging, food, and $750 (paid upon receipt of pre-circulated draft). Each author will receive contributors’ copies of The Record.

Send proposals as email attachments and direct your inquiries about the symposium, the Center, or The Record to:

Jimmy L. Bryan Jr.
Director, Center for History and Culture of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast
Editor, The Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record
Professor of History, Lamar University
jlbryan@lamar.edu
 

The Center for History and Culture acknowledges that Lamar University is located on the traditional territory of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, and we recognize that the region our university serves includes the homelands of the Akokisa, Bidai, Karankawa, Alabama-Coushatta, and other nations. We further acknowledge that, as president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, the namesake of our university, oversaw the forced removal of Caddo, Cherokee, Comanche, Delaware, Kickapoo, Shawnee, and other peoples from their homes. We affirm and respect tribal sovereignty in this land and in all territories.ies.