Call for Papers

Sex, Gender, Species

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: October 1, 2010

The growing field of animal studies has turned critical attention to the real conditions and stakes of human-animal relations. It has also become a new and important focus for debates over identity and difference that have embroiled academic theory over the past quarter century. Recent scholarship on animal otherness as well as discussions of how to traverse boundaries of difference often draws upon a history of feminist theory and practice even as this borrowing remains unacknowledged. The purpose of this conference is to foreground the relations between feminist and animal studies and to examine the real and theoretical problems that are central to both fields of inquiry.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

• gendered ethics and the politics of animal rights discourse and activism
• queering the animal
• animals and “nature”/ animals in “culture”
• violence against women and violence against animals
• material feminism and companion species
• pet love and the boundaries of kin, kind, and sex
• technologies of seeing or the gaze of/on sex and species
• otherness, empathy, and animal care ethics
• the woman and the animal – pitfalls and strategies of essentialism.

We are soliciting abstracts for papers that can be presented in 30 minute time slots. Selected presenters will receive a $1000 honorarium to cover travel expenses.

Submission guidelines: Please email a 1-2 page (500 -750 word) abstract for your proposed paper to lgruen@wesleyan.edu and kweil@wesleyan.edu

Conference Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Public Life and the Ethics in Society Project

For more information, see http://sexgenderspecies.conference.wesleyan.edu/

Related posts:

1. Campus Progress Snubs Animal Rights

July 7 saw the confluence of thousands of student progressives in Washington D.C. to share information and learn about progressive causes and strategy at the 2010 Campus Progress National Conference. The Feminist Majority, the SEIU, and the Enough Project were just a few of the groups present along with myself, representing peta2. Sadly, the wide array of campaigns presented at the conference by speakers, panelists, exhibitors, and students seemed to leave little room for animal liberation.

Originally thinking peta2 would help facilitate the Force of Food panel discussion, I was ultimately relegated to a place in the audience, frantically waving my arm as the discussion closed without anyone mentioning animal suffering. The sole and fleeting moment of respite came when Malik Yakini, chairman of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, confessed—rather dismissively—to being vegan, and prompting applause from several audience members.

Following the panel, which focused on food inequality and the industrialization of agriculture, each table from the audience discussed the issue. I was left to address animal liberation to my table of progressive students, who attempted to placate me with polite and dismissive responses. The woman to my right claimed the reason for silence on animal rights is because “we know” about the cruelty. One man said that eating meat was a comfort food to him and part of his Greek culture. A black woman said that she read Eating Animals but buttressed it with “I like meat” and asked what people like her can do to help animals (short of not oppressing them).

The table was primarily interested in how to bring fresh, local, healthy food to those in disenfranchised communities without being seen as intruders. Important, to be sure. And necessary for liberating humans and nonhumans alike. But avoiding the most abject form of oppression inherent to the system of animal agriculture—the animals.

I was further disappointed by the limited selection of vegetarian fare available during meal times. If meat, milk, and eggs are environmental, human rights, and animal issues, and the environment, human rights, and animal issues are pillars of progressive discourse, then someone forgot to tell the lunch and dinner organizers. The website’s FAQ responds to the question of whether the conference will be environmentally-friendly with: “Duh.” The boxed turkey sandwiches say something equally flippant, but much less reassuring.

On one hand, we should embrace the terms on which the “progressive movement” wishes to discuss factory farming and veganism (if this conference is an accurate sampling of some “progressive ideology”). At the same time a group that, at least on its face, seems so wrapped up in addressing inequality, is ripe for a critique of its anthropocentrism.

Related posts:

1. Call for Presentations – Sex, Gender, and Species Conference