Call for Presentations: 11th Annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies

March 2 – 4, 2012Canisius 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

2012 ASI-WAS Human Animal Fellowship Call for Applications

The Animals and Society Institute and Wesleyan Animal Studies invites applications for the sixth annual summer fellowship program for scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies.  

This interdisciplinary program enables 6-8 fellows to pursue research in residence at Wesleyan University at the College of the Environment. Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut is a selective private, coeducational, non-sectarian school of liberal arts and sciences known for the excellence of its academic and co-curricular programs.  Wesleyan’s College of the Environment was created in 2009 with a belief in the resilience of the human spirit and a desire to engage students and scholars in discussions about environmental issues and their social and political impact.

The fellowship is hosted by Wesleyan faculty Lori Gruen and Kari Weil. Gruen is Chair and Professor of Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan, and author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2011). Weil is a University Professor of Letters at Wesleyan, and author of Thinking Animals: An Introduction (Columbia, 2012).

The fellowship is designed to support recipients’ individual research through mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange among fellows and opportunities to contribute to the intellectual life of the host institution.  All fellows must be in continuous residence for the duration of the program, May 29 – July 6. 

The fellowships are open to scholars from any discipline investigating a topic related to human-animal relationships. Selected topics from previous years’ programs include: 

Analyzing one County’s Attempt to go “No Kill”
Animal Ethics in Cold War Literary Culture
Animal Experimentation and Animal Welfare in Twentieth Century Anglo-American Science
Animal Research in Theory and Practice
Animals and Colonialism
Cloning Extinct Species of Mammals
Ethics and Politics in Environmental Discourse in India
Gender Relations in Cattle Ranching
Genetically Engineered Pigs
Human Animal Relationships at the Duke Lemur Center
Inter-species Identity and Alterity in a Video Game
Legal Personhood, Animal Advocacy, and Human-Animal Relationships
Literary Representations of Dogs 
Media Representations of the 2007 Pet Food Recall
Science and Policies Affecting Elephants in Captivity
The Animal Rights Movements in France and the United States
The Human-Animal Relationship for Veterinary Students
Victorian Quaker Women’s Contributions to Feminist-Animal Ethics
Xenotransplantation and Black Market Organs  

Application deadline: November 30, 2011 

Amount of Award

Scholars selected to participate in the fellowship program will be awarded a stipend of $3,000 to help cover travel costs, housing, living expenses, books and other research expenses. The fellowship does not pay for housing; fellows will be responsible for finding, and paying for, their own housing. 

Eligibility

Applicants must (1) possess a Ph.D., J.D., M.S.W. or equivalent, or be a doctoral student at the dissertation stage; (2) have a commitment to advancing research in Human-Animal Studies; (3) be actively engaged, during the fellowship program, in a research project that culminates in a journal article, book, or other scholarly presentation; (4), be far enough along in the project that it will truly benefit from a concentrated period of work conducted on the Wesleyan campus; and (5) submit a follow-up report six months after the fellowship’s completion. Applications are encouraged from the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences, as long as a part of the project is explicitly dealing with the human-animal relationship in one form or another.

Application

Applicants should email electronic copies of the following items to fellowshipapplication@animalsandsociety.org:

Cover sheet with the applicant’s name, mailing address to be used for future correspondence, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address, present rank and institution name, date Ph.D. or J.D. or M.S.W. received or expected, citizenship status, title of project, history of fellowships and grants received during the past five years.

One paragraph abstract

Project proposal of up to three pages (single-spaced) that describes the project and indicates work completed on the project to date.  As the description will be considered by a panel of scholars from a variety of disciplines, it should be written for non-specialists.

Project proposal should include clear details about how far the applicant is along in the project, and what part of the project the applicant expects to accomplish during the course of the fellowship

Your proposal should also include answers to some of these questions: does your work have policy implications and if so, what are they? Does your work inform your teaching or how might it be integrated into coursework? How does your work contribute to the field of human-animal studies generally and to the animal question in your own field?

Curriculum vitae of up to three pages.

Two letters of recommendation (pdfs of original letters recommended)

Applicants are responsible for contacting referees and supplying them with a description of the project.  

Selection Process

The selection committee includes members from a range of disciplines connected to Human-Animal Studies.  

Applications are evaluated on the basis of how their completed project will contribute to Human-Animal Studies, the qualifications of the applicant to complete the research, and how well the applicant’s project complements the other projects. Fellows should expect a diversity of approaches, projects, and commitments to animal welfare when at the fellowship.

Applicants will be notified by e-mail and letter January 2012. 

The fellowship program is directed by Ken Shapiro, Executive Director of Animals and Society Institute, Margo DeMello, Program Director, Human Animal Studies Program, and Wesleyan professors Lori Gruen, and Kari Weil.

Please address all correspondence to us at the following address:

Committee on Fellowships
Animals & Society Institute
403 McCauley StreetWashington Grove MD 20880
fellowshipapplication@animalsandsociety.org
 (301) 963-4751
http://www.animalsandsociety.org/

Margo DeMello
Program Director, Human-Animal Studies
Animals and Society Institute
2512 Carpenter Rd, Suite 202A
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734) 677-9240
http://www.animalsandsociety.org/
www.facebook.com/AnimalsandSocietyInstitute

Call for Papers: Taking Animals Apart: Exploring Interspecies Enmeshment in a Biotechnological Era, May 31-June 2, 2012

Call for Papers: Taking Animals Apart: Exploring Interspecies Enmeshment in a Biotechnological Era

Sponsored by the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin--Madison

May 31-June 2, 2012

Madison, WI

Deadline for proposals: December 15, 2011

In our globalized, highly-industrialized society, human and nonhuman animals are enmeshed in surprising and often troubling ways. “Pharm” goats are living factories for the production of pharmaceuticals; honeybees are explosive-detectors in the “War on Terror;” and household pets – clothed and escorted in strollers – have become humanized companions. What do these sorts of enmeshments mean for us and our “human condition” as well as for our non-human animal counterparts? What do they mean for relationships among species?

The Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center and Program in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Wisconsin--Madison is sponsoring a three-day conference to bring together advanced graduate students in animal studies, science and technology studies, and allied disciplines (English, History, Anthropology, and Fine Arts among others) to discuss the relationships between animal studies and STS. We welcome papers or projects that explore the overlap of humans and other organisms as well as their mutual interaction with technology. Each participant will present a pre-circulated paper, article, creative composition, or dissertation chapter for constructive feedback in a roundtable discussion with peers and with scholars from the University of Wisconsin.

Our keynote speaker will be Susan Squier -- Brill Professor of Women's Studies and English at The Pennsylvania State University; acting director of its Science, Medicine, Technology in Culture program; and author of _Poultry Science, Chicken Culture: A Partial Alphabet_.

Mornings will include facilitated discussions on animal studies and STS as well as sessions on participants’ written work. In the afternoons, participants will attend field trips to sites of human-animal enmeshment in and around Madison. As part of the conference, artwork on the conference theme will be on display in a juried exhibition and honored at the keynote reception. A free public film screening of a movie on the theme of human-animal relations will conclude the conference weekend.

Modest travel stipends may be available from the Holtz Center at the University of Wisconsin to offset the costs of lodging, meals, and travel. The option to stay with local students will be available, should participants wish to do so. Please send a paper proposal of 250 words and a curriculum vitae to Peter Boger at boger@wisc.edu or Jen Martin at jamartin4@wisc.edu by December 15, 2011. Accepted papers will be due April 30, 2012. Visual artists and creative writers of fiction, nonfiction or poetry should contact Heather Swan for more information at hsrosenthal@wisc.edu.

Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies

6317 Sewell Social Science Bldg

1180 Observatory Drive

Madison, WI 53706

http://www.sts.wisc.edu

Minding Animals Conference 2012, 4-6 July 2012

4-6 July 2012
Utrecht University, the Netherlands

This conference is the second in a series of conferences about scientific, ethical and social issues related to human interactions with and uses of animals.

The aim of the conference is to bring together academics from different areas (animal welfare, animal ethics, and animal studies in general) with politicians and a broad variety of interest groups.

The conference offers a platform for exchange of information about research developments, debates about controversial political and ethical issues concerning the treatment of animals and a variety of cultural activities around animals.

http://www.uu.nl/faculty/humanities/EN/congres/mindinganimals/Pages/default.aspx?refer=/hum/mindinganimals

Animal Influence - November 17-19

IF’11

Interactive Futures (IF) 2011, November 17-19, presents the theme “Animal Influence” by spotlighting the work of media artists whose work has been influenced by the growing wealth of knowledge on animal behavior, cognition, creativity and consciousness emerging from such fields as ecology, cognitive ethology, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, zoology, and others. These research areas have focused on new understandings of animal life and are helping to shift assumed conventions concerning animal cognition, consciousness, and agency. While the change in human attitudes towards animals has been documented in news media as well as in more academic venues, the idea that animals might possess emotional, moral, cognitive lives is an idea that has been, in the past, either dismissed or associated with metaphorical or symbolic approaches.

Our particular interest is in how investigations in animal-human relations are affecting the ways in which new media artists are considering broader understandings of other species and creating varying methodologies for experimental art and new media appropriate for these unique circumstances.

IF’11: Animal Influence offers a workshop, exhibitions, performances, screenings and international promotional activity and an international publication with the journal Antennae: Journal of Nature in Visual Culture for audiences including policy-makers, business leaders, community leaders, educators, and members of the media, as well as academics and artists in various fields and interested members of the public.

Please see our website for registration and other information.

http://www.interactivefutures.ca/

Losing our humanity: Politics and the death of compassion

Why did some audience members at a recent GOP debate yell "yeah!" when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, "Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him [an uninsured man in a coma] die?"
What does it mean when people cheer for the vulnerable to die? Of all the troubling revelations that have emerged from the Republican debates, this outburst has unnerved me the most.
In haste, I would say that those clapping and cheering are simply sadistic. But I worry that the applause signals an overarching collapse of empathy, even a symptom of failing humanity. OK, so this sounds like catastrophizing—presenting a situation as worse than it actually is—but the audience reaction does invite us to puzzle the connections between empathy and humanness.
Frans de Waal, a biologist, argues in The Age of Empathy (2008) that humans are human because we are empathetic. De Waal writes, "Empathy is part of the survival package, and human society depends on it as much as many other animal societies do." Working against claims by economists and biologists that humans are essentially self-interested, de Waal demonstrates that, like primates, elephants and dolphins, we have an instinct for cooperation rooted in our ability to identify with the suffering of others. So, I have to ask, will we ever be human?
De Waal depicts humanity generously, if also romantically. It may be true that elephants display empathy—in fact, I am sure they do—but I am less certain as to how empathy functions for humans. If U.S. politicians are an example of humanity—many of you are snickering—how has empathy shaped politics?
In President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, he suggested that her capacity for "empathy" was a distinguishing quality. For the same qualities, Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, fought to keep her from the court.
House Republicans approved the "Protect Life Act" this October. The bill would allow hospitals to refuse to perform an emergency abortion on religious or moral grounds, even if a woman's life is at stake. The bill would have particularly devastating effects on rural communities that have only one hospital. The decision of the House disarticulates the "pro-life" slogan into something much more insidious and much less empathetic.
Kathy Rudy, a professor of women's studies at Duke University, has thought about abortion debates and animal relationships. In her new book, Loving Animals (2011), Rudy delivers a critical analysis of animal-rights movements, proposing in their place an ethics of "loving." She teaches us that by developing the bare bones of human empathy we can emotionally and spiritually find our way toward other animals. She argues that one of our main obstacles in loving animals, and for Rudy, especially dogs, is our tendency to exploit them as commodities.
While Rudy and I disagree about many things—I think that veganism is an intervention in the "meat industrial complex," and animal-rights legislation is necessary in the United States—I agree with her general argument. After all, we have been living with other animals since we crawled up "evolution's gently sloping beach."
I have long believed that Americans would do well to reconnect with our own animality. Acknowledging that we are literally composed of our relationships with other species seems like a good starting point. Bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms inhabit our body from surface to interior. Their activities make health and digestion possible for humans. The divide that we construct between ourselves and other organisms is an artifice. Our ability to disavow our own animality has enabled us to turn other animals into food, to justify medical experimentation on them and to discount their claim on the planet.
I'm with de Waal and Rudy in wanting to squarely locate the human with our animal neighbors, but I'm not sure how this ambition brooks with empathy and love. Like Rudy, I want to believe that "loving" will heal the human and animal divide. Undoubtedly we love animals, but a capacity to love doesn't obviously equate to empathetic or responsible engagement. While beautiful and even luxuriating, love is strangely aimed toward inequality, despite our best intentions.
Love of animals surely mattered for Terry Thompson, the Ohio farmer who released his captive animals before ending his life. And now these same animals are piled high. While Ohio Gov. John Kasich's overturning of a ban on the import of "exotic animals" enabled this carnage, it is Thompson's own despair that unraveled love into its brutal elements.
Where is our sense of compassion in this time of fading empathy? Unfortunately, compassion has become redolent of sentimentality. To be compassionate is to seem trite. But compassion exists in the outer reaches of empathy. If empathy is identification with someone's suffering, compassion is imagining oneself in the circumstances that produce someone's suffering.
For most of us, it is difficult to extend empathy into compassion; our empathy mostly resides in our homes and with loved ones. To include chickens, and further out, sharks, and even further, fleas, empathy must be transformed into compassion so that even if you can't identify, you can still empathize with their suffering.
I do not know if other animals are compassionate. De Waal tells the story of Kuni, a captive bonobo ape who tried to help an injured bird fly out of an enclosure that she herself could not leave. Kuni placed the bird outside her enclosure, but the bird was too stunned to fly. She gently picked up the bird and climbed the highest tree in her enclosure and carefully spread its wings, holding one in each hand, and sent it into the air. Does Kuni recognize her captor's failure of empathy to release her? And if she does, where would Kuni go if she left captivity?
Even as Americans are cajoled into becoming inhuman by political agendas, empathy and even compassion surely find niches in which to flourish. But I am finding it more and more difficult to hold open that possibility in a world of rapidly closing doors. It seems that we are all waiting for the clink of the deadbolt. Will we have enough time to become human?

by Eva Hayward

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/losing-our-humanity-politics-and-the-death-of-compassion/Content?oid=2695015

Gorilla Reunion: Damian Aspinall's Extraordinary Gorilla Encounter on Gorilla School

Gorilla Reunion: Damian Aspinall's Extraordinary Gorilla Encounter on Gorilla School http://aquavitafilms.com/. In the African jungle, conservationist Damian Aspinall searches for Kwibi, a lowland gorilla he hasn't seen for 5 years. Kwibi grew up with Damian at his Howletts Wild Animal Park in England. When he was five, he was released into the forests of Gabon, West Africa as part of conservation programme to re-introduce gorillas back into the wild. Now Kwibi's 10 years old, much bigger and stronger. Will Damian find him? Will Kwibi attack him? Watch the whole story of the amazing UK gorillas who are making a comeback in Africa in Gorilla School on Animal Planet narrated by Kevin Spacey from 4th May 2010 at 8pm.Adopt a Gorilla School baby: http://www.aspinallfoundation.org/adopt-an-animal/?breed=62
 Produced by Aqua Vita Films Ltd http://www.aquavitafilms.com/
 http://www.gorillaschool.com/

Research on chimpanzees must end - By Justin Goodman

I recently testified on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatmet of Animals before a federally commissioned National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine committee charged with determining whether the United States should retain the dishonorable distinction of being one of only two countries in the world — Gabon being the other — that continues to conduct harmful experiments on chimpanzees. While the dwindling few who still defend the cruel practice mistakenly claim that it is vital to the advancement of human health, most experts speaking at the recent meeting admitted — either voluntarily or under questioning from the panel — that experimenting on chimpanzees is not necessary to find cures for human ailments. In one especially candid moment at the meeting, Emory University’s Frans de Waal, as he concluded his presentation about the behavioral experiments he has conducted on chimpanzees, said: “We wouldn’t be having this meeting if ethics wasn’t an issue.” He was absolutely correct. The real question at issue here is not whether imprisoning and experimenting on chimpanzees is scientifically useful to humans or not; it is whether doing so is right to begin with. Of course, everyone recognizes that the ends do not justify the means and that regardless of the hypothetical benefits, there are some things we just shouldn’t do. Harming chimpanzees — our closest living genetic relatives — in experiments is one of these forbidden acts that is acknowledged as such worldwide, and is the driving force behind new legislation in the United States called the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R. 1513/S. 810) that would ban invasive experiments on great apes and retire more than 500 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuary. Animals’ lives would be saved, as well as about $30 million per year in taxpayer money. In a recent New York Times column, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) — a former primate experimenter himself and co-sponsor of H.R. 1513 — wrote: “Americans can no longer justify confining these magnificent and innocent animals to traumatic invasive research and life imprisonment.” Ironically, science has built the compelling ethical case against experimentation on chimpanzees. As Jane Goodall so thoughtfully and persuasively explained during her presentation at the meeting, chimpanzees are extremely intelligent, social and emotional individuals. They have incredible memories and share cultural traditions with their children and peers. They are self-aware. They laugh when they’re enjoying themselves and grimace when they’re in fear. They care deeply for their families and forge lifelong friendships. They empathize with one another and console their friends who are upset. They grieve when their loved ones pass away. Not surprisingly, the speakers exploiting chimpanzees’ similarities to humans to defend further experimentation failed to mention that, as is true with humans, when chimpanzees are deprived of the freedom, autonomy and meaningful social interaction they need — as they necessarily are in laboratories — they languish. As a result of having to endure the terror and pain of having their bodies routinely violated for experiments and the loneliness of their tiny, barren steel-and-concrete prison cells, many chimpanzees exhibit abnormal behaviors indicative of depression and post-traumatic stress. They suffer from symptoms including social withdrawal, anxiety and loss of appetite. They pull out their own hair, bite themselves and pace incessantly. I recently met a sanctuary-living chimpanzee who spent years being tormented at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Prevention and other government laboratories. His medical records show that on several occasions, he almost died during experiments, only to be revived and tormented further. Years later, he still has violent screaming fits several times daily, during which he scratches and tears into the flesh on his head and chest. This is the real legacy of chimpanzee experimentation in the United States. Research, by nature, often leads us to conclusions that are uncomfortable and inconvenient, but science and society will never progress if people only choose to assimilate ideas that reinforce their personal biases and interests. In 2011, it lacks academic integrity to deny that chimpanzees possess all the qualities necessary for us to afford them the right not to be treated as laboratory equipment. It lacks moral integrity to continue experimenting on them or attempting to justify it by claiming that we might gain from it. The media recently reported on new evidence that chimpanzees are altruistic. We’ve seen time and again that they prefer to help others, even at a personal cost to themselves. Humans have inherited this capability from chimpanzees, and as a society we place those who demonstrate it in high regard. It is time for us to use the evolutionary gifts we’ve received from our fellow primates. We must all demonstrate empathy, compassion and selflessness and act now to give the more than 1,000 chimpanzees still locked in U.S. laboratories the respect and freedom they deserve. Justin Goodman is associate director of Laboratory Investigations at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Marymount University in Arlington, Va. http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/180037-research-on-chimpanzees-must-end

Συνέντευξη με τον Dr. Marc Bekoff - ‘Animals have emotions and morality’

“Animals have emotions and morality “, Gent, Belgium, 19 November 2009 from Helga D'Havé on Vimeo.

“More compassion for animals feeds into more compassion for people”, Gent, Belgium, 19 November 2009 from Helga D'Havé on Vimeo.

Κατεβάστε δωρεάν το τελευταίο τεύχος του Institute for Critical Animal Studies

Το Institute for Critical Animal Studies κυκλοφόρησε το τελευταίο τεύχος του περιοδικού του κα περιλαμβάνει δοκίμια, έρευνες, ποίηση, ένα νέο σύνολο δεδομένων, μια συνέντευξη, και πολλά βιβλία, ταινίες και ανασκόπηση συνεδρίων. Μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε δωρεάν τον πίνακα περιεχομένων και το πλήρες τεύχος από εδώ.