Monday, January 3, 2011

Artful Inquiry Within Dietetics Among Themes at First Critical Dietetics Conference, Toronto

Announcing

The First International Critical Dietetics Conference

August 19-20, 2011
Ryerson University

Toronto, ON, Canada


Critical Dietetics is informed by transdisciplinary scholarship from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. By contributing to scholarship, practice, and education, Critical Dietetics strives to make visible our assumptions, give voice to the unspoken, embrace reflexivity, reveal and explore power relations, encourage public engagement and diverse forms of expression, and acknowledge that there are no value-free positions. Through these principles, Critical Dietetics will engage with the ever-changing health, social, and environmental issues facing humanity. The First International Critical Dietetics Conference will bring together scholars and practitioners to engage in dialogue regarding Critical Dietetics as a means for growing this burgeoning movement.

What counts as "knowing" in dietetic practice? How do we, as nutrition professionals, come to know what we know and what we don't know? How does the evidenced-based discourse so dominant in dietetics scholarship today, intersect with and benefit from the wisdom-based discourse honed and refined for millennia? What does dietetic culture render silent? What is it that we have already accomplished as a profession? In what ways do we continue to evolve? How can we further build upon the rich roots of our profession? What do we envision for our future? These are but a few of the difficult, but important questions that Critical Dietetics seeks to explore.

Conference Themes

The themes of the conference include, but are not limited to:
- critical analysis of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, ability, and size in dietetics
- dietetic epistemology and post-structural orientations to dietetic education and practice
- artful inquiry within dietetics employing arts-informed methods such as performance, poetry, literature, documentary film, and art-making
- “civic dietetics” (Wilkins, et al, 2010), social justice, social responsibility, and the human right to food

We welcome abstract submissions under the following headings (times include discussion period):

1. Individual Paper (30 minutes): Please submit a 200 word abstract including the corresponding author's name, email address, and names of co-presenters.

2. Symposium (90 minutes): Please submit three abstracts (200 words each) and a thematic overview (100-200 words) of the symposium. Indicate the corresponding author's name, email address, and the names of the co-presenters.

3. Pecha kucha (20 slides of images to be shown for exactly 20 seconds each): Please submit a 200 word abstract including the author's name, email address, and the names of the co-presenters. Learn more about pecha kucha at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha and http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what.

Email your abstract to criticaldietetics@gmail.com by January 17, 2011. Notification of decisions will be made by March 21, 2011.

Information about keynote speakers, conference registration, accommodations, and travel will be available in the coming months at www.criticaldietetics.org.