The Graduate Journal of Food Studies invites submissions for a special issue exploring the theme Food as Joy.

Food is and will always be a source of pleasure, celebration, creativity, and connection. This issue seeks contributions that examine the intersections, tensions, and possibilities of food as a source of joy. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and encourage submissions that engage with food's social, cultural, political, environmental, and emotional dimensions.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Celebration and ritual

• Mutual aid and care

• Pleasure, embodiment, and sensory experience

• Community building through food

• Seasonal traditions/festive foods

• abundance/well-being

We welcome submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars across disciplines in the form of either research essays or short form pieces. See below for more information on each submission category.

Read the full CFP on the GJFS official PubPub site and submit to the special issue here: https://gradfoodstudies.pubpub.org/2026specialissue

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Research essays

Research essays should critically examine topics and texts related to food and foodways, eating and consumption, and/or cooking and culinary practice. They should pose a clear and compelling thesis that is formally supported throughout the piece. Strong submissions will be original, clearly articulated, and will reflect graduate-level critical analysis at the time of submission. Research essays are evaluated in terms of originality, quality, clarity, and strength of the intervention. All research pieces additionally go through rigorous, blind peer review by burgeoning and established experts in the field.

As a graduate journal, we accept research essays that are shorter than the traditional article length (6,000 to 10,000 words). This is in an effort to make first-time scholarly publication more accessible to grad students, as well as to allow for pieces published in GJFS to be potentially expanded into longer, full-length articles for other journals and publications. Research essay submissions to GJFS should therefore be between 3,000 to 5,000 words in length (excluding notes and bibliography).

Short Form Pieces

This genre consists of formal, academic-style pieces that (unlike research essays) do not require an argument or thesis in their structure or intervention. Under this category, we invite pieces such as research-based reflective essays, edited field notes, and interviews with food studies scholars and food practitioners. We encourage you to reach out to us with any inquiries about short form pieces and what else may or may not qualify.

Short form pieces are not subject to peer review but are revised in consultation with the editorial team. GJFS accepts all short form pieces of 750 to 1,500 words in length.

GJFS follows the formatting and style guidelines of the most recent version of the Chicago Manual Style Edition 18.