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EACAS 2021 June 24-25th – ‘Appraising Critical Animal Studies’ -Call for Papers

Whilst the ultimate success of CAS will be measured in terms of material social change in the lived circumstances of nonhuman animals a pathway to this involves cultural and political contestation. An overarching aim of critical animal studies has been to contest the anthropocentrism of academic knowledge. This has taken place across traditional academic disciplines, their sub-disciplines, and broader fields of knowledge under the rubric of the ‘animal turn’ over the last few decades. Yet CAS has always been extra-academic. Consequently, the politicization of human-animal relations has also taken place in the broader culture, including in social movements, NGOs and in the media.In this virtual conference we aim to assess and appraise progress in such spheres contesting hegemonic and normalized anthropocentrism.

We seek papers falling under two broad categories – i) those which either constitute (or examine) examples of this disciplinary contestation, and ii) reflect and review the progress of critical animal studies. Such reflection inevitably entails detailed critical scrutiny of the CAS field and its overlaps with animal studies more generally, as well as the political and cultural constraints on the animalization of academia and culture. It also entails being attentive to where critical perspectives on human / nonhuman animal relations are especially lacking and yet most needed right now, and how CAS and all those working to end animal oppression can progress the movement in a more coherent, consistent, and effective manner.We welcome papers from all disciplines and sub-fields, and from those working independently or as part of advocacy/activist movements.

Areas of focus include, but are not limited to:

Established disciplines – e.g. Sociology, Psychology, Criminology, Philosophy, Literature, Art, Media, Politics, Film, TV, Geography, History, Anthropology and their sub-disciplines.

Established fields – e.g. Cultural Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, Critical Race Studies, Disability Studies, Childhood Studies, Organisational Studies, Ecofeminism, Ecosocialism.

The media – facilitator or gatekeeper?

Life in the ‘life’ sciences – e.g. Ecology, Animal Welfare science, Ethology, Veterinary science

Animals and/in education (studies)

Substantive areas – e.g. Climate Crisis, Sixth Mass Extinction, Pandemics

Legal rights, laws and regulations

Progress in the animalisation of academia

Critical animal perspectives in social movements

Pathways for animal inclusion – Intersectionality, One Health

Mainstreaming critical perspectives – lessons from other social movements

You can also submit an abstract to a symposium internal to the conference themedaround Heterotopia, radical imagination, and shattering orders:manifesting a future of liberated animals hosted by Dr. Paula Arcari. Please see https://tinyurl.com/y356utrk for more information

Idea for another topic or medium that fits with our theme? We welcome presentations in all formats. Let us know!

Please submit a 250-word abstract and short bio to cfhas@edgehill.ac.uk by 28th February 2021. Include ‘EACAS 2021’ in the subject line.

Abstracts will be assessed by: Claire Parkinson (CfHAS, UK), Paula Arcari (CfHAS, UK), Brett Mills (CfHAS, UK), Richard Twine (CfHAS, UK), Kathryn Gillespie (USA), Nuria Almiron (Spain), Helena Pedersen (Sweden) and Dinesh Wadiwel (Australia).

conference poster
conference poster

Conference on Animal Rights in Europe 2020

The Conference on Animal Rights in Europe (CARE) is an international conference aimed at connecting and inspiring animal rights groups across Europe. Through workshops and networking opportunities, all groups can come together and empower each other to establish the best possible directions for the animal rights movement to take.

In 2020 CARE will be organized as an online event due to the health and safety of all participants and staff.

CARE will take place on August 14 to August 16, 2020. During the 3 days many inspiring animal rights groups from across Europe will present their ideas on how to make this world a better place. Let´s get inspired by their stories and solutions and let´s change this world together.

Web: https://www.careconf.eu

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2951573458258994/

PROGRAM AND SPEAKERS

Tickets (€10) here

CFP: Animal Futures: Animal rights in activism and academia

Call for presentation proposals

Critical animal studies scholars and animal advocacy activists have long argued that human-animal relations are in a profound state of crisis. Humans continue to exploit other animals on a massive scale. This has devastating consequences for nonhuman animals themselves, as well as for human societies and ecosystems. This has become painfully evident with the current pandemic, which is taking a massive toll on individual lives and societies. Many viruses, such as the coronavirus originate from nonhuman animals and are transmitted to humans largely due to the fact that humans continue to use other animals for food, entertainment and other purposes stemming from human interests. Such pandemics are expected to continue, as human exploitation of non-human animals continues. In this predicament, there is an urgent need to develop a more viable and non-exploitative relationship to other species and ecosystems. This conference focuses on imagining futures for human-animal relations, in a world that is rapidly transforming. We invite papers to engage for example, with the following issues, from critical animal studies perspectives:

  • What challenges and opportunities do global crises present for theorising and working towards animal liberation?

  • What should and could be some new directions in animal advocacy activism?

  • How can feminist, queer, disability, postcolonial and other perspectives inform our understanding of other animals and our relations to them?

  • Etc.

We are looking forward to contributions from academics and activists.

Please send your abstract (max 300 words) to conference@loomus.ee by September, 30, 2020. 

The conference will also be live streamed. It is possible to deliver a presentation via Skype.  

All the practical information (including speakers, registration, food, accommodation, fees) will be published later in 2020. 

Organized by Loomus, Estonian Vegan Society and Kuulitalu OÜ

Venue: Pärimusmuusika Ait, Viljandi, Estonia

Date: May 8th 2021 – May 9th 2021

https://www.facebook.com/events/916549622101201

Predatory Journals Warning

Dear all,


We hope all of you are doing well in this particular time we are going through. We are writing to you because some participants at the EACAS Conference in Barcelona (2019) recently informed us about invitations they have received to publish theirconference papers in journals with dubious credibility.


Out of concern for these practices, we wanted to warn you about the reality of predatory journals, of which some of you may be very familiar with, but some may not.  Predatory journals are publications which incurre in deceptive practices, mostly involving charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy and without providing the other editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not. 
For further information we recommend you check these lists of Predatory Journals and Publishers. Also, Think. Check. Submit helps through the process of choosing a journal to submit your work.


Best wishes,


UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Departament de comunicació
Roc Boronat, 138
Barcelona 08018 (Spain)
Tel: +34 93 542 1237
https://www.upf.edu/cae
cae@upf.edu

Photo by Gerald Schömbs on Unsplash

New book announcement: Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals by Paula Arcari

Title: Making Sense of ‘Food’ Animals A Critical Exploration of the Persistence of ‘Meat’ (2020)

Author: Paula Arcari

This book addresses the persistence of meat consumption and the use of animals as food in spite of significant challenges to their environmental and ethical legitimacy. Drawing on Foucault’s regime of power/knowledge/pleasure, and theorizations of the gaze, it identifies what contributes to the persistent edibility of ‘food’ animals even, and particularly, as this edibility is increasingly critiqued. Beginning with the question of how animals, and their bodies, are variously mapped by humans according to their use value, it gradually unpacks the roots of our domination of ‘food’ animals – a domination distinguished by the literal embodiment of the ‘other’. The logics of this embodied domination are approached in three inter-related parts that explore, respectively, how knowledge, sensory and emotional associations, and visibility work together to render animal’s bodies as edible flesh. The book concludes by exploring how to more effectively challenge the ‘entitled gaze’ that maintains ‘food’ animals as persistently edible.

For more info and free preview please visit: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811395840

making-sense-of-food-animals

Call for Book Chapters: Denialism in Environmental and Animal Abuse

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS for the volume

Denialism in Environmental and Animal Abuse: Averting Our Gaze

in the Lexington Books series: Environment and Society

(series ed. Douglas Vakoch)

 

Editors:

Dr. Tomaž Grušovnik (Faculty of Education, University of Primorska, Slovenia)

Dr. Karen Lykke Syse (Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway)

Dr. Reingard Spannring (Institute for Educational Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria),

 

Short outline:

Despite readily available facts and figures regarding human-caused natural degradation and often overwhelming scientific consensus on issues related to environmental pollution, we are still faced with the disbelief about the existence and extent of anthropogenic impact on the environment. The failure of the so-called Information Deficit Model, according to which public inaction and apathy are generally attributable to lack of relevant information, prompted natural and socials sciences as well as humanities to look for alternative accounts of passivity and inertia in the field of environmental education and awareness-raising. Thus, in the last two decades researchers increasingly focused on the concept of “denialism” as the more suitable explanation of the lack of significant environmental change. Several fields contributed to our understanding of the phenomenon, including anthropology, social psychology, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, ecocriticism, natural science and science communication. The proposed edited volume thus seeks to provide a clear and comprehensive contribution to our understanding of the “environmental denial” with chapters from researchers in natural and social sciences as well as humanities, disclosing the multifaceted appearance of the concept by approaching it from different perspectives.

In somewhat similar fashion to environmental disciplines, animal ethics, critical animal studies, and related fields also stumbled on an analogous phenomenon when trying to account for our increasing meat consumption and lack of empathy for the animals slaughtered in the industries despite the efforts of educators, activists, and academia to raise the awareness of the harsh realities of “Animal-Industrial Complex.” Indeed, several papers in recent decades have focused on consumers’ cognitive dissonance as the vehicle for ignorance, as well as on the drastic consequences of the denial, including Perpetration-Induced-Traumatic-Stress that occurs in workplaces demanding repeated exposure to violence. As the research shows, more than hundred and fifty billions of animals killed annually by the industries are hardly a consequence of our ignorance and lack of empathy; to the contrary, withdrawal of compassion for the suffering animals can be seen as a product of socialization into carnistic societies. The edited volume thus also aims to present the reader with recent insights into the denial of animal sentience, subjectivity, and agency in range of contexts, providing opportunity of both denialism debates – environmental as well as animal – to mutually shed light onto each other.

 

Book chapters explicitly addressing at least one of the following issues are welcomed:

– psychological, anthropological, sociological and/or philosophical aspects of environmental denialism;

– cognitive dissonance and denialism in carnistic societies;

– consequences of denialism in Animal-Industrial Complex;

– environmental education and environmental denial;

– animal rights education and denial of animal subjectivity and agency;

– denialism and possible alternative explanations of refusal to acknowledge environmental and animal abuse;

– similar topics that explicitly address denialism in the context of environmental and animal abuse;

 

Submission procedure:

Chapter proposal submissions are invited from researchers and academics on or before September 30, 2019. Proposals should not exceed 1000 words, presenting main arguments of the chapter and explaining how they fit into the general theme of the volume.

Proposals in Word or PDF formats (Times New Roman, 12, 1.5 spacing) should be sent to

tomaz.grusovnik@pef.upr.si and reingard.spannring@uibk.ac.at

on or before the specified date together with author’s CVs. Authors will be notified about the potential acceptance of their chapters by October 31, 2019. Full chapter submissions will be due by January 31, 2020. Full chapters should be around 6000 words in length, following Lexington “Production Guidelines” (https://rowman.com/Page/PROGUIDE). All chapters will be subject to peer-reviews. Once the chapters have been reviewed, final chapters will have to be submitted within 2 months from the date they are returned to authors. The volume is planned to be published in late 2020 or early 2021. For more information about the project please write to Tomaž Grušovnik and Reingard Spannring to the above addresses.

 

lalaine-macababbad-unsplash

Proposals open for the next EACAS conference

After the success of the 6th EACAS Conference last month in Barcelona we are now looking for proposals for the next conference three day conference to be held in 2021. We are ideally looking for a new hosting country (conferences have already taken place in the UK, the Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Sweden and Spain). We anticipate a conference happening in May or September 2021 and we are also interested in receiving appropriate themes for the meeting.

The organisers of the Barcelona conference look forward to passing on their experience and expertise in order to help the new team.

Please send your ideas to eacas.eu@gmail.com by September 15th 2019.

eacas-barcelona

CFP: Beastly Modernisms

September 12-13, 2019
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
Abstracts due 31 January 2019

Keynote Speakers:
Kari Weil, Wesleyan University (US)
Derek Ryan, University of Kent (UK)

I still do not think La Somnambule the perfect title – Night Beast would be better except for that debased meaning now put on that nice word beast.’ – Djuna Barnes to Emily Holmes Coleman

‘Once again we are in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down’ – Donna Haraway

If modernism heralded a moment of socio-political, cultural and aesthetic transformation, it also instigated a refashioning of how we think about, encounter, and live with animals. Beasts abound in modernism. Virginia Woolf’s spaniel, T.S. Eliot’s cats, James Joyce’s earwig, D.H. Lawrence’s snake, Samuel Beckett’s lobster, and Djuna Barnes’s lioness all present prominent examples of where animals and animality are at the forefront of modernist innovation. At stake in such beastly figurations are not just matters of species relations, but questions of human animality and broader ideas of social relations, culture, sex, gender, capitalism, and religion. Modernism’s interest in the figure of the animal speaks to the immense changes in animal life in the early twentieth century, a period where the reverberations of Darwinian theory were being felt in the new life sciences, as well as emergent social theories that employed discourses of species, and developing technologies and markets that radically alerted everyday human-animal relations. It was also a period in which new theories of human responsibilities towards animals were also being articulated with Donald Watson coining the idea of veganism in 1944.

The recent “animal turn” in the humanities invites new ways of thinking about the beasts that we find in modernist culture. Moreover, animal studies arrives at a point at which modernist studies is already in the process of redefining what modernism means. Turning to modernism’s beasts not only promises fresh ways of understanding its multispecies foundations, but also points towards how modernist studies might intervene in contemporary debates around animal life. Building on the foundational work on animals and modernism by Carrie Rohman, Margot Norris, Kari Weil, Derek Ryan and others, Beastly Modernisms invites papers on animals and all aspects of modernist culture. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

•    Animal Life, Species and Speciesism
•    Beasts, Beastliness and Bestiality
•    The Creaturely
•    Unstable Signifiers
•    Animal Rights, Ethics and Politics
•    Anti-Vivisection Movements
•    Bestial Ontologies and Materialities
•    Queer Animals and Sexuality
•    Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism
•    Human Animality and Social Darwinism
•    Animal Commodification and Capitalism
•    Race, Class, Sex and Gender
•    Religion, Myth and Animism
•    Wildlife, Imperialism and Hunting
•    Pets, Companion Species and Domestic Animals
•    Biology, Ethology, Ecology and the Natural Sciences
•    Animal Performance, Circuses and Zoos
•    Animal Trauma, Violence and Warfare
•    Extinction and the Anthropocene
•    Livestock, Agriculture and Working Animals
•    Meat Production and the Animal Industry
•    Vegetarianism, Veganism and Eating Animals
•    Modernist Animal Philosophy
•    Humanism, Posthumanism and Transhumanism
•    Early- and Late- Modernist Animals 

Papers
Individual papers should be no more than twenty minutes in length. Please send an abstract of 300 words and a brief biography to beastlymodernisms@gmail.com by 31 January 2019.  

Panels
We welcome proposals for panels or roundtables of 3 to 4 speakers. Please send an abstract of 500 words and speaker biographies to beastlymodernisms@gmail.com by 31 January 2019

Submissions are open to all researchers at every level of study. We particularly encourage submissions from postgraduate researchers.

cfp-beastly-modernism

Conference on Animal Rights in Europe (PRAGUE)

The Conference on Animal Rights in Europe (CARE) is taking place in Prague this year! CARE is an international conference aimed at connecting and inspiring animal rights groups throughout Europe.

Early bird registration: until the 22nd of July 2018 (this Sunday).

The conference is a chance to meet and grow with organizations and individuals both new and established. This will be an opportunity to meet minds, exchange ideas, and share strategies to strengthen the cause as a whole.

This is an extremely critical time for the cause – as more inhumane industry sweeps across Europe, more action and education is necessary. Animals are not the only ones who benefit from this movement – humans and the environment do too. We encourage powerful activists and participants from all realms to participate in the event.

More information on https://careconf.eu/

care-praha-2018

Call For Papers: ‘Animal Machines / Machine Animals’.

We would like to announce the details and call for papers for the British Animal Studies Network Autumn conference, entitled ‘Animal Machines / Machine Animals’.

The conference will take place on the 2nd and 3rd November, and is organised by the Life Geographies Group of the University of Exeter.

As well as a number of invited speakers (to be announced) we are also issuing this call for papers. If you are interested in giving a paper addressing the topic from whatever disciplinary perspective please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words with a brief biography (also of no more than 200 words). Please send them to R.Gorman@exeter.ac.uk and G.f.Davies@exeter.ac.uk.

The deadline for abstracts is Friday 29 June 2018. Presentations will be 20 minutes long, and we hope to include work by individuals at different career stages. Sadly we have no money to support travel, accommodation or attendance costs.

Meeting fees will be £25 for unwaged and £50 for waged attendees.

As with all previous BASN meetings, this one takes as its focus a key issue in animal studies that it is hoped will be of interest to scholars from a range of disciplines and to those working outside of academia. Topics covered at this meeting might include (but are not limited to):

  • The (re)shaping of human-animal relations through (ideas about) machines.
  • Animal-machine interactions, hybridities, and co-constitutions.
  • Ways of thinking across machines and animals in relation to ontology, epistemology, and ethics.
  • Animal bodies, agencies, and autonomies within mechanised systems.
  • The role of machines in facilitating and co-producing experiences and engagements with non-human animals.
  • Augmented and machinic animals in art, literature, and film.
  • The ontological and affective aspects of ‘robotic pets’ and other animal-machine hybrids.

We welcome papers that deal with the theme of ‘Machine Animals / Animal Machines’ in both contemporary and historical settings, and would especially like to see papers that address these issues from contexts outside the UK. Papers are welcomed from across animal studies, including disciplines such as (but not limited to) geography, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, history, science and technology studies, ethology, psychology, behavioural sciences and ecology, bioscience/biomedical research.

For further details of the British Animal Studies Network go to http://www.britishanimalstudiesnetwork.org.uk

exeter