The 2018 National Conference marks a milestone for Beer Culture, as it will be our first as a permanent subject area with PCA/ACA after four years as a provisional special topic. We welcome proposals to join or return to present with our fast-growing and lively group of diverse scholars in Indianapolis next year. The Midwest has a long history as America’s beer heartland. With a growing craft beer scene, Indiana now ranks 15th in the country for number of breweries, and Indianapolis is home to some exceptional, nationally-renowned beers. We always plan to get out and explore the beer scene together when we gather for our conference, so present your paper and then lift a pint with fellow beer researchers at Triton Brewing, Flat 12 Bierwerks, or Black Acre Brewing Company. If you’re feeling adventurous, take a side trip up to the 3 Floyds Brewpub in Munster, Indiana before or after the conference.
No longer a fringe movement, the craft beer revolution continually challenges and changes cultural and economic expectations about beer’s consumers, producers, social image and rituals, and even its very definition. In recent years, craft’s rapid market share growth and premium pricing in the United States have led to the global acquisition of local and regional breweries by the world’s largest corporate brewers who simultaneously seek to develop their own more artisanal beer brands to compete with craft labels both here and abroad. Beer studies is a growing academic field, as well. Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Institution hired its first-ever Beer Historian/Scholar to research, collect, and document beer culture as part of its new American Brewing History Initiative.
Beer culture is a dynamic interdisciplinary field of study that can be approached from multiple academic and creative directions. This quickly-expanding subject area explores issues of authenticity, place, history, identity, gender, race, class, the maker movement, the job market, visual design, rhetoric, social media, law and ethics, business and entrepreneurship, marketing, and community. In 2018, we particularly encourage the submission of papers dealing with race, ethnicity, and queerness in craft beer, beer’s environmental impact, beer rituals, beer and politics, corporate macrobreweries, beer economics, beer history, archival and oral history projects, homebrewing, global beer culture, and intersections with food culture.
Proposals are requested for papers and panels that identify and discuss any aspects of beer, its producers, its consumers, the communities and identities it inspires and maintains, and/or its social, cultural, historical, and economic impact.
Should you or your colleagues have any questions, please contact the Beer Culture chair:
Annie Sugar, PhD
Instructor, College of Journalism and Communications
University of Florida
amsugar@ufl.edu
ALL submissions must be made through the conference submission site. For individual papers, please submit a title and 100-word abstract. For themed paper sessions, each presenter must enter her/his own presentation and the chair should contact Dr. Sugar to assemble them into a panel. You should also contact Dr. Sugar for help in submitting roundtable discussions. The deadline for all submissions is October 1, 2017.
