The Institute for Critical Animal Studies is pleased to announce our 2012 Annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies Awards of the Year. Awards will be bestowed on March 3, 2012 during the conference at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY (March 2-4). We thank the many nominees for submitting their work. It was an honor to consider the wonderful nominations from around the world! Although the final decisions were difficult, we truly feel that the following award recipients have done superb work to help animals and end oppression. We are proud to recognize their contributions to the field of Critical Animal Studies.

Critical Animal Studies Grassroots Project of the Year
“Food Empowerment Project”: http://www.foodispower.org/

Critical Animal Studies Media of the Year
“Conflict Gypsy”: http://www.conflictgypsy.com/

Critical Animal Studies Faculty Paper/Project of the Year
Dr. Lori Gruen, “The first 100”: http://first100chimps.wesleyan.edu/

Critical Animal Studies Undergraduate Paper/Project/Thesis of the Year
Lara Drew: “Freirean Pedagogy and Activism: Radical Adult Education in the Animal Liberation Movement

Critical Animal Studies Graduate Paper/Project/Dissertation of the Year
James Stanescu: “The Abattoir of Humanity: Philosophy in the Age of the Factory Farm”

Critical Animal Studies Book of the Year
Jason Hribal: Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

Critical Animal Studies Tyke Scholar of the Year
Tereza Vandrovcova

Critical Animal Studies Britches Scholar of the Year
Jessica Groling

Critical Animal Studies Hilda Scholar of the Year
Adam Weitzenfeld

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A new grassroots organization, Evolve For Animals, has formed to implement a comprehensive and creative education-based approach to animal rights advocacy.  While this small group is amidst plans to develop book drives, vegan soup kitchens, plant-a-tree programs, film screenings, leafleting, and speaking engagements, there is a special focus on reaching out to the 18-25 demographic, especially those in US colleges and universities.  To deliver the vegan message to this population, EFA is promoting its informational website via student listservs, providing their literature to on-campus animal rights groups, and recently began working with college administrators and faculty to organize special events for students.

To support this organization’s efforts, learn more about their projects, or if you are an organizer/volunteer of an animal rights group that is interested in distributing EFA’s literature please use the contact information and links below.

Web:

www.evolveforanimals.org

www.facebook.com/evolveforanimals

Email:

act@evolveforanimals.org

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In a recent New York Times article exploring the rise of the many manifestations of “animal studies” across campuses and universities nationwide, the Institute for Critical Animal Studies’ Journal for Critical Animal Studies was noted as being part of this important, growing movement in the academy. In particular, Karen L.F. Houle’s essay “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics as Extension or Becoming? The Case of Becoming-Plant” (Volume IX, Issue 1/2, 2011) got special mention for “following in [the] word tracks” of Jacques Derrida.

The term “animal studies,” developed out of the field of animal research (i.e., nonhuman animal testing, dissection, and vivisection), can be confusing to some advocates. Two academic fields that arose at the same time in defense and advocacy of nonhuman animals are human-animal studies and critical animal studies. Moreover, human-animal studies was also mentioned under the umbrella of animal studies, but instead relates to animal advocacy, welfare, and protection. Recently, animal studies and human-animal studies have been adopted by objectivist opportunists not dedicated to promoting veganism and animal liberation, but rather, they are interested in theoretically studying the concept of the animal as subject. This can be argued,  as noted by Anthony J. Nocella II, as leading to theoretical vivisection lacking ethical consideration. Just as activist-academics from the Animals and Society Institute are trying to keep true to what human-animal studies is (i.e. animal protection and advocacy), critical animal studies and the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, a more board and radical field of study, must demand that those who use the term critical animal studies stay engaged in intersectional social justice “dedicated to the abolition of animal and ecological exploitation, oppression, and domination. CAS is grounded in a broad, global, emancipatory, and inclusionary movement for total  liberation and freedom” (ICAS website).

To forward the goals of ICAS and CAS, we will be holding the 11th Annual Conference for Critical Animal Studies with a special theme “From Greece to Wall Street: Global Economic Revolutions and Critical Animal Studies.” This event is taking place from March 2-4 at Canisius College on Buffalo, NY.

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Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation
By: Kim Socha
Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2012, XIV, 258 pp.
Pb: 978-90-420-3423-5
€ 54 / US$ 81

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ABOUT THE BOOK

This interdisciplinary study fuses analysis of feminist literature and manifestos, radical political theory, critical vanguard studies, women’s performance art, and popular culture to argue for the animal liberation movement as successor to the liberationist visions of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes, most especially the Surrealists. These vanguard groups are judiciously critiqued for their refusal to confront their own misogyny, a quandary that continues to plague animal activists, thereby disallowing for cohesion and full recognition of women’s value within a culturally marginalized cause.

This volume is of interest to anyone who is concerned about the continued—indeed, escalating—violence against nonhumans. More broadly, it will interest those seeking new pathways to challenge the dominant power constructions through which oppression of humans, nonhumans, and the environment thrives. Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde ultimately poses the animal liberation movement as having serious political and cultural implications for radical social change, destruction of hierarchy and for a world without shackles and cages, much as the Surrealists envisioned.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword – Helena Pedersen and Vasile Stanescu: Series Editor’s Introduction: What is “Critical” about Animal Studies? From the Animal “Question” to the Animal “Condition”

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rooting for the Avant-Garde

I. Avant-Garde Women Writers and Destruction in the Flesh

II. Staring Back in the Flesh: Avant-Garde Performance as an ALM Paradigm

III. Convulsive Beauty, Infinite Spheres and Irrational Reasons: Reverie on a New Consciousness

Conclusion: Love and Laughter Now: Plucking at Stems or Uprooting Oppression?

Works Cited

Index

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Kim Socha is an animal activist and sits on the board of the Animal Rights Coalition in Minneapolis, MN. Holding a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism, she works as a composition and literature instructor with publications in the areas of surrealism, Latino literature and pedagogy.

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March 2 – 4, 2012
Canisius College
Buffalo, New York, USA

Host Sponsors:
Animal Allies Club of Canisius College

THEME:
From Greece to Wall St.: Global Economic Revolutions and Critical Animal Studies

As worldwide economies collapse and socio-political revolutions arise in response to education tuition increases, job losses, tax increases, land rights, and religious division, governments are collapsing only to be hijacked by corporations. In the US, national and transnational banks and financial institutions are being bailed out by the government, while common people are kicked out of their homes and fired from their jobs so corporations can save money. Simultaneously, global revolutionary fervor increases against corporations, banks, and corrupt financial institutions. People are demanding their rights and their nations back. The results of this backlash are police brutality and political repression toward activists worldwide. The theme of this year’s annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies is based on inquiry into how economic markets locally, regionally, nationally and globally affect nonhuman animals. Can these revolutions include a critical animal studies agenda? If not, why not? If they can, how would this agenda manifest both philosophically and strategically? How does the economy affect nonhuman animals? Are there alternative ethical and transformative economic systems that promote animal liberation? How are capitalism and transnational corporations affecting nonhuman animal exploitation? How do industrial complexes promote exploitive economic practices? What tactics and strategies can be used to resist economic exploitation? How do economic crises similarly oppress human and nonhuman animals and the environment? In what ways are the resulting oppressions intersectional? How are schooling, teaching, and education influenced by economic interests which promote exploitation?

We welcome proposals from community members including, but not limited to, nonprofit organizations, political leaders, activists, professors, staff, and students. We are especially interested in topics such as the history of social movements, spirituality and social movements, nonviolence, alliance politics, freedom, democracy, and notions of total inclusion. We are also interested in reaching across the disciplines and movements of environmentalism, education, poverty, feminism, LGBTQA, animal advocacy, globalization, prison abolition, prisoner support, labor rights, disability rights, anti-war activism, youth rights, indigenous rights/sovereignty, and other peace and social justice issues.

Areas of inquiry include:The Future of Critical Animal Studies
Revolution
Occupy Wall Street
Corporatization
Global Industrial Complex
Anarchist Studies
Feminism
Activism and Tactics for Social Change
Media
Social Networking
Critical Criminology
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)
Speciesism
Animals in Relation to Religion and Spirituality
Abolition as Theory or Strategy
Animals and Property
Challenges to Human Domination
Sexuality and Gender
Culture, Language, and Animals
Racism
Domesticated and Wild Animals
Capitalism
Deconstructing Human and Animal
Social Constructions
Re-Defining Nature
Bio Ethics and Universal Ethics
Post-Colonialism
Geography, Space and Place
Animal Epistemology
Education and Schooling

Presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes in length.

We are receptive to different and innovative formats including, but not limited to, roundtables, panels, community dialogues, theater, and workshops.

You may propose individual or group “panel” presentations, but please clearly specify the structure of your proposal.

Please stress in your paper/roundtable/panel/etc. how you will be focusing on the program theme and linking it to economics and critical animal studies.

Proposals or abstracts for panels, roundtables, workshops, or paper presentations should be no more than 500 words. Please send with each facilitator or presenter a 100 maximum word biography (speaking to your activism and scholarship) in third person paragraph form.

The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2012.

Accepted presenters will be notified via e-mail by January 25, 2012.

Please send proposals/abstracts and biographies electronically using MS Word and as an attachments in Times Roman 12 point font to: 

Stephanie Jenkins
Co-Conference Chair
scjenkins@gmail.com

Logistics Contact:
Morgan Jamie Dunbar
dunbarm@my.canisius.edu

Conference Schedule Contact:
Sarat Colling

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On September 9th 2011, Canisius College’s Institute for the Study of Human-Animal Relations (ISHAR) hosted “The Use of Primates in Biomedical Research: A Personal Perspective” at the Montante Cultural Center featuring guest speaker Dr. James Ha, head of the primate breeding program at the Washington National Primate Research Center (WNPRC) in the University of Washington (UW). It was here and then, where animal rights activist and student, Morgan Jamie Dunbar, was combatively arrested and detained after raising questions during the evening’s Q&A segment about the USDA-documented mistreatment of primates at UW during his tenure at that institution.

Interestingly, this speaking engagement, which was organized at the behest of Dr. Michael Noonan, Director of Canisius’ Animal Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (ABEC) Bachelors program and the event’s moderator, was billed to the student body as a “symposium.” However, with a presentation of only one viewpoint from one speaker, this speciously lopsided affair not only misrepresented itself by solely presenting Dr. James Ha’s position in favor of animal experimentation but also proceeded to suppress and censor opposing view points, as Dr. Ha repeatedly and recklessly referred to animal advocates as “domestic terrorists”, “crazy”, “wild”, and “violent.”

In a written exchange one month prior, Dunbar was promised by Noonan that the evening would present a balanced conversation that would encourage questions of the speaker, stating “My hope is that you will be part of the conversation that we have at the symposium. It is open to the public and we will welcome all points of view.”

With this in mind, Dunbar waited her turn to the microphone before raising questions regarding the fatal starvation of a stump-tailed macaque, 40 illegal primate surgeries, and the subsequent litany of USDA violations that ensued. However, before Dr. Ha could complete his response to the aforementioned points of interest, Noonan directly interrupted and intervened, Dunbar’s microphone was silenced, and she was quickly removed from the auditorium and slammed against a wall in an adjoining room, handcuffed, and told she was being arrested for “criminal trespassing in the 3^rd degree.”

Witnesses report that Dunbar’s questions were relevant and her conduct was in accordance with the symposium’s format.  Attendees watched on appalled and outraged.

In an official statement, Dunbar said “The conditions that allow for social injustice have always emerged as a result of society’s failure to recognize the rights of individuals or groups. When denial of such rights is tolerated or indeed encouraged, it is bound to fortify the bases for further repression and injustice. That is why we, as a community, must speak out in solidarity against the repression and severe violation of First Amendment Rights that occurred on September 9th.”

To voice your concerns on this matter, the following information has been provided below:

Dr. Terri Mangione- Dean of Students
(716) 888-2130
mangiont@canisius.edu

John J. Hurley- President
(716) 888-2100
hurleyj@canisius.edu

Erica Sammarco- Assistant to the President
(716) 888-8203
sammarce@canisius.edu

Dr. Michael Noonan- ABEC Director/ISHAR Director
(716) 888-2772
noonan@canisius.edu
Further Reading & Information:

The Griffin:
http://www.thegriffincanisius.com/news/student-activist-removed-forcefully-from-ishar-lecture-1.2594887?pagereq=1

Artvoice Weekly:
http://artvoice.com/issues/v10n37/week_in_review/monkey_business

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2011 European 2nd Annual Conference for Critical Animal Studies

Prague, Czech Republic

October 15th – 16th, 2011

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THEME:

“RECONFIGURING THE ‘HUMAN’/’ANIMAL’ BINARY – RESISTING VIOLENCE”

For more information:

click here

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This two-day interdisciplinary conference will critically explore a variety of issues concerning the historic, current, and future situation of nonhuman animals across globally interconnected societies. Adopting a Critical Animal Studies perspective this conference seeks to interrogate not only the ‘question of the animal’ but also, with urgency, the deteriorating lived circumstances of many nonhuman animals. We are especially pleased to be hosting this conference in association with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS) as the 2nd Annual European Conference for Critical Animal Studies.

The 2nd annual European ICAS conference is an official pre-event for  Minding Animals 2 – which takes place at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 1-7th July 2012.

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While some student-governed animal rights groups are relegated to a second-class status amongst collegiate clubs and organizations, Paths to Animal Liberation (PAL) worked to defy this norm by fulfilling their school’s requirements, policies, and guidelines to be officially recognized.  On the campus of Hunter College, the largest college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system, PAL was successfully deemed a 1st Year Charter Club by their administration, and therefore receives funds of $1,000 annually for their activities.  With official elections and an executive board, PAL not only maintains a validated and legitimized presence on their campus, but they do so with a hard-line vegan message.

Since its inception a mere nine months ago, and with a core membership of only 15 individuals, PAL exemplifies ardent activism as they have organized numerous film screenings, hosted guest speakers, distributed free vegan food samples to students and faculty, conducted public vegan cooking demonstrations, setup outreach tables on an average of twice per month, and cultivated a mailing list of over 200 people.  Most notably, PAL was also able to make incremental changes toward veganizing their campus cafeteria by inclusively educating the appropriate staff members of their needs, delivering a petition of over 300 signatures, persistently initiating all lines of communication, and inevitably succeeding in bringing specifically-labeled vegan meals to the cafeteria three days a week.

In the months to come, PAL seeks to improve the efficacy of their outreach, fully veganize their cafeteria, and increase their presence on campus.  Recently, the group has constructed a facebook page to better disseminate information and is now developing plans to design their own website.  In addition to college funds, PAL also seeks assistance and resources to expand its reach from external sources such as Farm Underground, Mercy For Animals, Win Animal Rights, and the Tri-State Area’s most active animal rights group Friends of Animals United NJ (FAUN) in organizing events, strategizing effective means of animal advocacy, and acquiring relevant outreach media/literature.

To learn more about this group, discover ways you can implement similar strategies, or to simply share ideas and resources, please feel free to contact PAL with the information below.

Contact:           Danielle Amodeo (Founder/President)
Email:               pal.hunter@yahoo.com
Facebook:       http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=158063214208388

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Andy Stepanian, cofounder of the Sparrow Media Project and defendant in the landmark SHAC7 case, will be coming to New York University’s Kimmel Center on Tuesday, April 26th to speak on matters pertaining to contemporary activist endeavors.  Specifically, he will reflect on his experiences and observations as to which tactics and strategies are effective, when to employ them, and how the inclusion of varied approaches when advocating for an issue can often yield the most positive outcomes.  Given his extensive background with non-violent direct action movements, his role in the campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences, and his current work with the Sparrow Media Project, the evening is sure to be an engaging one for all who attend.  Open to the public.

Date:  Tuesday, April 26^th, 2011

Time:  6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location:  NYU’s Kimmel Center, Room 803

Relevant Links:

www.sparrowmedia.net

www.shac7.com

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Gene Baur
Author and Co-Founder of Farm Sanctuary

Book Signing and Talk

April 13, 2011

7 to 8pm

Moffett Hall 2125

SUNY Cortland, New York

Gene Baur is co‑founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, America’s leading farm animal protection organization. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from California State University, Northridge and a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He has conducted hundreds of visits to farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses to document conditions. His pictures and videotape, exposing factory farming cru…elty, have been aired nationally and internationally, educating millions. Gene has testified in court and before local, state and federal legislative bodies, and has initiated groundbreaking legal enforcement and legislative action to prevent farm animal abuse. He played an important role in passing the first U.S. laws to prohibit cruel farming methods – including the Florida ban on gestation crates, the Arizona ban on veal and gestation crates, the California ban on veal and gestation crates and battery cages, and the California ban on foie gras. His efforts have been covered by leading news organizations, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. His book, entitled Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food, was published by Touchstone in March, 2008 and has appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe best seller lists.

More about Gene at: http://www.genebaur.org/

Sponsored by:
Anthony Nocella’s Deviant Behavior Course and Cortland Animal Allies

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The following are the 2011 Scholars of the Year and Award Winners of the Year, that will be presented at the 10th Annual Conference for Critical Animal Studies Conference, “Thinking About Animals” at Brock University March 31 and April 1, 2011.

INSTITUTE FOR CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES
2011 ANNUAL AWARDS

2011 UNDERGRADUATE PAPER OF THE YEAR
“Animal Experimentation and the Law: Are the Laws Enough?”
Tayler Staneff

GRADUATE PAPER OF THE YEAR
“Gender and Slaughter in Popular Gastronomy”
Jovian Parry

MEDIA OF THE YEAR
“Bold Native”
Denis Henry Hennelly, Casey Suchan, Mary Pat Bentel, and Jeff Bollman

ACADEMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies”
Richard Twine

ACTIVIST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Muzzling a Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism, Law, Money, and Politics on Animal Activism”
Dara Lovitz

2011 BRITCHES SCHOLAR OF THE YEAR
Jenny Grubbs

2011 TYKE SCHOLAR OF THE YEAR
A. Breeze Harper

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