The two-day interdisciplinary conference, “State of the Plate: Food and the Local-Global Nexus,” will explore the historic, aesthetic and political connections between our local and global food systems and movements, Friday, March 27, through Saturday, March 28, 2015. The free conference will be held in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium at the FedEx Global Education Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Chandler Keynote Lecture, “The Transformative Power of Food and Region: One Ingredient at a Time,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. Vivian Howard, chef and owner of The Chef and the Farmer in Kinston, North Carolina, and star of the Peabody-winning PBS television show A Chef’s Life, will deliver the lecture. Her husband and co-owner, Ben Knight; Durham filmmaker and A Chef’s Life producer and director, Cynthia Hill; and A Chef’s Life co-producer Malinda Maynor Lowery will join Howard. Lowery is also associate professor of history and director of the Southern Oral History Program at UNC.
The lecture will be followed by a desert reception in the FedEx Global Education Center James and Florence Peacock Atrium.
Additional sessions will feature research, initiatives and insights from students, faculty, independent scholars, entrepreneurs, local organizations and community members. Each session has a theme that corresponds to “basic tastes,” such as hot, salty, smoky, sour, bitter, savory and sharp, and will be followed by refreshments that correspond with each session’s theme.
A special food issue of the Center for the Study of the American South’s award-winning journal, Southern Cultures, will also be released at a launch party at 6 p.m. at the gourmet emporium, Southern Season, following sessions on the first day of the conference. Tickets for the launch party may be purchased online.
The State of the Plate conference is part of the Global American South project and is presented by the Center for Global Initiatives, Center for the Study of the American South, department of American studies and Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Additional support is provided by American Food Roots and the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For more information, a schedule of conference events and to register, please visit the event page.
