The single theme of Nourritures was chosen for its breadth of denotations and was enthusiastically approved as the topic for the 2008 North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature conference, held at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. The appointed session chairs were quick to suggest intriguing subtopics. Along with the more predicable choices of "L´Art culinaire", "Nourritures céleste" and "Appétits et désirs", less obvious subjects such as "Cannibalisme", "L´Imaginaire du vin", and "Nourritures et médecine" were proposed as well. These topics in turn generated a plethora of stimulating original presentations and texts.