Since its first meeting in 1987, the annual Association for the Study of Food and Society conference has provided a space for critical, interdisciplinary exchange on food studies research and practice—one with a strong sense of community, which is perhaps best articulated by ASFS members themselves:
That sense of community is alive all year long through the peer-reviewed journal Food, Culture & Society, in the ASFS newsletter, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and much more. Our community spirit also takes root on a new campus each year at the annual conference, which has been co-hosted with the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) since 1992.
This year’s meeting took place on the gorgeous lake-front campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison upon land acknowledged as the traditional territories of the Hooçak Nation. (Please see page 6 of the conference program for the full land acknowledgement.)
As we learned in the conference program, Madison is home to myriad co-ops, farm-to-table restaurants, CSAs, community gardens, bike paths, parks, and 13 farmer’s markets, including the Dane County Farmer’s Market, the largest in the nation. (Check out Katherine Hysmith’s Twitter thread photo tour if you weren’t able to visit it in person.)
The agri-food energy of Madison inspired and transformed the conference theme of “the agroecological prospect,” as panels, roundtables, workshops, keynotes, and meals each examined the politics of integrating values, food, and farming. Our thanks and congratulations to the Program Committee co-chairs, Michael Bell and Michelle Miller, and the members of the various planning committees who put on an outstanding conference.
Our #foodstudies18 live-tweeting efforts (including our pre-conference How To Guide) are one way that we seek to make the conference proceedings accessible to folks outside the organization and for members not able to attend this year’s conference.
We’re happy to hear live-tweeting was helpful this year for those not able to attend in person—and for those in attendance who struggled to choose between all the great session options.
To build a digital archive of this year’s conference, below is a catalogue of Twitter threads and Twitter moments that offer highlights from some of the sessions. It’s worth noting that we doubled our Twitter coverage of full sessions this year thanks to the help of a growing team of live-tweeters.
Check out #foodstudies18 for even more coverage—and we hope to see you at next year’s conference: #foodstudies19 at the University of Alaska, June 26-29, 2019!
#foodstudies18 Twitter Threads and Moments
For more information: Please see the final program for presenter names, affiliations, and paper titles. Check out the interactive online program, which also includes abstracts.
- Pre-Conference Field Session: Ethnobotany (see also post 2)
- Session 5A: Carework and the Gendered Work of Feeding
- Session 6A: Brewing Histories: Landscapes of Beer from the Local to the Global
- Session 8A: Chains of Nutrition: Feeding Plants, Animals, and Humans
- Session 14A: Eating, Preserving, and Narrating Foods in the 19th and Early 20th Century
- Session 3B: Climate Change: Producers Perspectives
- Session 5B: Gender in the Foodway
- Session 14B: Redefining “Good Food” in the 20th and 21st Centuries
- Session 6C: Historicizing the Virtues of Vegetarian Cuisine
- Session 9C: Activism and Mobilization
- Session 12C: Working with the Senses
- Session 13C: Meet the Grantmakers: Opportunities for Funding in Food and Agriculture for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: A Panel Discussion (SAFN
Sponsored) - Session 7D: Standing on our Forbearers’ Shoulders We Come Together to Discuss Race and Food: A Roundtable
- Keynote Address: Ricardo Salvador, Union of Concerned Scientists, “Science Is Not ‘Neutral’: Why Science Is Inherently Political – The Case of Agroecology”
- Session 1E: Working for Seed Sovereignty: Indigenous and Global Perspectives
- Session 7E: Critical Approaches to Superfoods (see also thread 2 and thread 3)
- Session 5F: Gastronationalism in Global Context
- Session 6F: Culinary Tourism and the Disrupting of Power
- Session 7F: Finding a Common Table: Researching at the Intersection of Food Studies & Histories of Medicine & Nutrition
- Session 6G: Place and Time in Food Memory: Migration and Nostalgia
- Session 10G: Getting Real: How Food Studies Programs Can Work with Local Communities for Mutual Benefit (SAFN sponsored)
- Session 5H: Evolving Tastes, Distinguishing Identities: Wine in the 21st Century
- Banquet and Address: Chef Claudia Serrato and Rowen White
- Session 1I: Boots on the Ground: A Roundtable About Community Engagement and Impact
- Session 8I: Food on the Move (see also thread 2 and thread 3)
- Session 10I: Is There Such a Thing as a Free Lunch? School Meals in the Long 20th Century
- Session 7J: Design, from Technological Innovation to Consumption
- ASFS Presidential Address: Krishnendu Ray, “Suffering and Social Theory: Towards an Epistemology of Pleasure and Joy”
You can also check out past conferences by following the hashtags:
- #oxyfood17
- #foodstudies2016 (though you’ll need to scroll back to June 2016 for relevant tweets)
- #asfs15
Feature Image Photo Credits: Emily Contois and Katherine Hysmith, 2018
Emily Contois 
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