Archive - Past Events

Talking about Food - Local and Global Contexts took place April 27-28, 2018, and was organized by Sofia Rüdiger and Susanne Mühleisen.The conference was funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Eric Anchimbe (Bayreuth) + Markus Bieswanger (Bayreuth) + Karin Birkner (Bayreuth) + Stefan Diemer & Marie-Louise Brunner (University of Applied Sciences in Birkenfeld) + Delia Chiaro (Bologna) + Jana Declercq (Ghent) + Martina Drescher (Bayreuth) + Cornelia Gerhardt (Saarland University) + Theresa Heyd (Greifswald) + Jakob Leimgruber (Basel) + Gwynne Mapes (Bern) + Susanne Mühleisen (Bayreuth) + Adrian Roßner (Bayreuth) + Sofia Rüdiger (Bayreuth) + Britta Schneider (FU Berlin)

The consumption of food and drink is inherently connected to key issues of culture, society, and identity as well as prescriptive notions of rituals and rules. It is not surprising then, to find a pronounced academic and public interest in foodways. The latter is evidenced, for example, in the plethora of non-fiction food-related publications. Recent developments, such as the copious posting of food pictures on social media sites as well as so-called eating shows (both sometimes referred to as ‘food porn’) underline the fascination and public engagement with food.
In order to foster more focused research and provide a platform for scholars in the area of language and food, the conference brought together linguists working on diverse languages and from different theoretical backgrounds.

Scholars from a range of linguistic disciplines and working on a variety of languages addressed topics such as:

- food discourse(s) in regional contexts
- language, food, and globalization
- talking about food on social media
- mediated food discourse in general
- the relationship between food, language, and identity

The Personal Narrative Online conference took place June 26-27, 2015, and was organized by Daria Dayter and Susanne Mühleisen.

The linguistic interest in personal narrative has intensified with the spread of computer-mediated communication. Social media in particular have been cited as primary sites for the narrative construction of self that open new possibilities for creative and selective self-presentation through stories of personal experience. Short life reports and small stories have risen to prominence in personal websites, social status updates, blogging posts, and finally, the telegraphic microblogs whose explicit purpose is to provide immediate updates on “what’s going on”. Recently, more and more studies tackle the questions of motivation, function, and performance of storytelling online.

This conference aimed to bring together scholars interested in linguistic structures of a narrative. By inviting contributions from scholars who work in different theoretical strands, we hoped to achieve a synthesis of findings across linguistic fields. Our goal was to illustrate the variety of possible interpretive lenses through which narrative can be viewed, to advocate interdisciplinarity, and to foster connections among scholars whose research frames are different but complementary.