Dorothy Barenscott and Shelley Boyd are co-editing a forthcoming edited collection Canadian Culinary Imaginations that is under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press. Canadian Culinary Imaginations is an interdisciplinary volume that brings together academics, creative writers, food journalists, artists, and curators who invite conversations about how food shapes creative thinking in a range of contexts.

The first section of the collection focuses on the topic “Indigeneity and Foodways: Stories from Home and Abroad,” and content related to Indigenous culinary imaginations appears throughout the entire collection. The first section, “Indigeneity and Foodways,” includes five chapters that examine dynamic histories and present-day expressions related to Indigenous food ways. These culinary imaginaries - in the forms of urban photography, storytelling, professional cooking, restaurant culture, cookbooks, screen culture, and national symbols - have the potential to reshape intercultural awareness and understanding both within and beyond Canada. Interrelated topics include environmental ethics and cultural connections to the land through food, foodie trends, and the visibility/invisibility of culinary practices in national and international contexts. The first section opens with a photographic essay by Inuk artist Barry Pottle. Pottle pairs Inuit voices with his photographs, promoting the visibility of these communities living in southern Ontario. Highlighting the challenges of obtaining country food in urban centres, Pottle’s art practice is tied directly to his people’s cultural identity, health, and land. Originally from Nunatsiavut in Labrador (Rigolet), Pottle now lives in Ottawa, where he has worked with the Indigenous arts community for many years. Published in numerous Inuit magazines and art journals, Pottle’s photographs have been acquired by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The collection closes with a conversation between Mi’kmaw artist Ursula Johnson and curators David Diviney and Melinda Spooner on the topic of Johnson’s interrelated and award-winning multimedia performance artworks, entitled re(al)-location, that provide a community-based examination of the natural and cultural ecologies, and foodways of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  Johnson’s (re)al-location, which included the celebratory feast and performance “The Festival of Stewards,” was part of Landmarks2017/Repères2017, a network of contemporary art projects staged in Canada’s national parks that was a forum for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and Indigenous epistemologies. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Johnson won the 2017 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent prize for contemporary art.

In collaboration with their publisher, Boyd and Barenscott are in the process of applying for sources of funding (publishing subventions) as McGill-Queen’s University Press is a not-for-profit academic publisher. The final manuscript was submitted in February 2019, and the collection will be published in late 2019.