CFP: 2nd International Symposium on Veganism and Law 22nd and 23rd of July 2017 Berlin, Germany

Call for Papers

**DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: April 7th, 2017**

Veganism is rapidly growing in popularity but how are vegans supported by our laws and equality measures or the regulations and polices that they influence? Whilst the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission states that veganism comes within the scope of protection of human rights and equality measures, veganism in other countries is regarded to be largely exempt from such protection.

In the recent past, vegan lawyers have successfully litigated in cases concerning discrimination against vegans and some countries, such as Italy and Portugal, have made attempts to obtain legal protection for the dietary aspect of veganism.

In 2016, an All Party Parliamentary Group was established in the UK to give a voice to the demands of vegans; Jeanette Rowley published a chapter in Critical Perspectives on Veganism arguing that veganism is transformational for the exclusivity of human rights; Italian Carlo Prisco published The Right to Vegetarianism and Ralf Müller-Amenitsch published Vegan im Recht in Germany.

This growing area of interest is critical to the development and well-being of the global vegan community and has enormous potential for animal rights. In 2017 and onwards, we expect to see more vital and informative work in this area.

Building on our first international Symposium on The Right to a Plant Based Diet, and our concluding Declaration that veganism comes within the scope of various human rights principles and provisions, this Symposium asks further questions about veganism in law. Its aims are to examine the strengths and limits of international and regional laws for veganism and vegans, to highlight the value that legal protection for veganism can bring to nonhumans and to explore how vegan rights can contribute towards the end of speciesist prejudice. For more detailed information on the call please see http://www.theivra.com/symposium-2017.html

CFP: Workshop: Empathy, Animals, Film

Feb5

Call for participation and papers for phd candidates and postdocs

Workshop: Empathy, Animals, Film

With Prof. Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University)

International workshop at the University of Basel, June 20, 2017

Guest: Lori Gruen (Convenors: Markus Wild, Friederike Zenker, Livia Boscardin)

Registration Deadline: April 30, 2017

20/21–24 June 2017, the annual conference of the SLSAeu will be held in Basel on the topic of “Empathies” (http://www.empathies2017.com).

In this context, the workshop provides a forum to explore concepts of empathy with regard to animals and especially animals on film.

Empathy is a key concept in contemporary studies focussing on animals e.g. in Animal Ethics or research on Animal Minds. Humans and other animals engage with each other by means of empathy. The understanding thereby ranges from a cognitive ability to put oneself into the shoes of the other to more basic forms of immediate affective resonance. In our workshop, we are particularly keen to discuss Lori Gruen’s idea of ‘Entangled Empathy’. The aim is to bring together the thinking about entangled empathy and cinematic images of animals. In which ways do films contribute to empathetic engagement, respectively might refuse to do so? In a critique of traditional ethic theory, Gruen emphasizes how important the idea of particular animals, cases and contexts is for an alternative model of ethics. Accordingly, we would like to explore the transformative power of particular animals that become visible on film, as well as possible limits of the filmic medium.

We would like to address questions such as: 1) What is specific about empathy towards animals? How do animals engage empathically with humans? 2) What, if any, are the moral values of empathy? What is the moral value of specific concepts of empathy, e.g. entangled empathy? 3) How can we relate concepts of empathy to experiences with animals on film? How does the medium of film – particular films, scenes, cinematic narratives etc. – contribute to the empathic engagement of viewers?

PhD candidates and early postdocs from fields including, but not limited to, philosophy, anthropology, human-animal-studies, cultural studies, film studies and media studies are encouraged to participate. To apply for participation, please submit both a short CV and a short letter of motivation.

Participants who wish to discuss their own work are encouraged to submit a short abstract of their presentation (1 page). Be prepared to give a 15-min presentation. We invite submissions concerning the work of Lori Gruen (e.g. discussions of the concept of entangled empathy and related topics) and/or the topic of animals in visual media. The conference language is English.

Please hand in all documents electronically to Friederike Zenker: The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2017. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be announced on May 12, 2017. For questions or further information please contact Friederike Zenker

Contact

Friederike Zenker friederike.zenker@unibas.ch

University of Basel / eikones NFS Bildkritik / Rheinsprung 11 / CH – 4051 Basel

Call for contributions: Animal Liberation and Pedagogy

Jan11

Deadlines: 28. February 2017 Outline + Bio | 30. April 2017 Contribution

Vegan educators are invited to contribute to this volume of essays on animal liberation and pedagogy. For the purposes of this book, the term ‘educator’ is very loosely defined and does not only refer to professionals in teaching positions. This project invites anybody who sees themselves as a facilitator of knowledge, be they teachers, authors, artists, activists or anybody else who is in a position to offer a platform for knowledge exchange in a private or public setting (including parents and guardians, key workers, public speakers, etc.).

The book hopes to serve as a platform for the exchange of practical tools, including revolutionary communication skills and radical approaches to pedagogy, all of which should incorporate a thematisation of animal liberation, speciesism or animalisation/dehumanisation amongst humans. Through this, it shall serve as a critique of and counterbalance to neoliberal education and its adherence to a mostly binaristic, white, heteronormative, masculinist, Euro- and anthropocentric curriculum.

Preference will be given to essays that critique the predominantly Eurocentric neoliberal, white, masculinist approach to (teaching) animal liberation, and/or to essays that present or imagine alternatives to dominant approaches in animal liberation in an educational context.

Contributions could address, but are not restricted to, the following areas:

– teachers as activists and activists as teachers

– pedagogical approaches to communicating animal suffering

– the ethics of teaching animal liberation (e.g. to children or when using imagery of animal suffering)

– animal oppression as part of a larger system of injustice (e.g. discussions of kyriarchy, or intersectionality if not appropriated by white contributors)

– teaching animal liberation (antispeciesism, veganism) as resistance to imperialism, racism, misogyny, genderism, heteronormativity, ableism, classism etc.

– animal liberation in an indigenous and anticolonialist / decolonialisation context

– teaching animal liberation in an interdisciplinary context (e.g. through a combination of science and art)

– making animal liberation relevant in specific subjects (e.g. Food Technology; Critical Food Studies; Media Studies; International Relations; Gender Studies; Disability Studies etc.)

– introducing veganism into non-animal-centered movements (e.g. doing vegan outreach in some form or another within feminism, queer communities, Antifa, BLM, occupy, environmentalism etc.)

– being a vegan pedagogue in a context that is hostile towards vegans

– teaching animal liberation under government repression (i.e. anti-terror laws, military regime etc.)

– teaching animal liberation from a marginalised position

Please outline your proposed work in 500 words and add a few lines about yourself to the proposal email. Contributions will be chosen in January and the final pieces could have a word count between 2500 and 7000 (please include a roughly estimated word count in your outline).

The English used in the essays should be as accessible as possible. Personal accounts, letters, diary entries, are welcome as are critical and academic analyses, however when theory and/or jargon is used it should be explained in the text itself or a glossary. If footnotes are used, please include them on the page they refer to.

Email Dr Agnes Trzak | a.trzak@gmail.com

CfHAS conference Cfp: Animals and Social Change | 29 – 30th June 2017 | Liverpool, UK.

Dec15

CfHAS conference Cfp: Animals and Social Change | 29 – 30th June 2017 | Liverpool, UK.

CfHAS will host a conference on the theme of animals and social change in June 2017. We invite submissions that address these questions:

What constitutes effective social change for other animals?
How do particular framings of animal ethics and veganism shape strategies for intervention and change?
How do the worlds of animal advocacy and academic research on human-animal relations speak to each other? Could more come from those interactions?
What role do visual media, the online vegan community and documentary film-making play in effecting social change?
How do different communities imagine progressive social change for animals taking place?

We are interested in receiving submissions of academic papers (20 minutes), short films (any genre) and poster presentations. This conference will include paper and poster presentations, film screenings and a workshop session focused on strategies for social change involving dialogue between academics, activists and advocates. The conference is designed to facilitate time and space for discussion.

This conference will be of interest to those working in critical animal studies, advocacy, grassroots activism, animal media and the vegan business community.

Please submit abstracts to: cfhas@edgehill.ac.uk

Closing date for abstracts: 1^st March 2017

The Centre for Human-Animal Studies (CfHAS) was formed in October 2014 during its inaugural conference held in Liverpool and the Edge Hill campus. CfHAS is an interdisciplinary forum for research and activities that engage with the complex material, ethical and symbolic relationships between humans and other animals. The Centre acts as a hub for research. It has established links and collaborations with colleagues in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and with the broader academic and advocacy community in the UK.

CFP: Writing Meat: Flesh-Eating and Literature Since 1900

Oct31

The conversion of animal bodies into flesh for human consumption is a practice where relations of power between humans and nonhuman animals are reproduced in exemplary form. From the decline of (so-called) traditional animal husbandry to the emergence of intensive agriculture and, more recently, the biotechnological innovation of in vitro meat, the last hundred years have seen dramatic changes in processes of meat production, as well as equally significant shifts in associated patterns of human-animal relations. Over the same period, meat consumption has risen substantially and incited the emergence of new forms of political subjectivity, from nationalist agitation against ritual slaughter to the more radical rejection of meat production in abolitionist veganism.

Distinct disciplinary responses to meat production and consumption have occurred across the humanities and social sciences in areas including (but not limited to) food studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, ecocriticism, and (critical) animal studies. Theoretical engagements with these upheavals have ranged from viewing meat production as a site of affective encounter and irresolvably complex ethical entanglements, to framing industrialised slaughter as a privileged practice in what Dinesh Wadiwel has recently diagnosed as a biopolitical ‘war against animals’. This edited collection solicits essays which engage with these transformations in the meanings and material practices of meat production and consumption in literature and theory since 1900. We seek contributions from scholars working on representations of meat in any area of literary studies (broadly conceived) but are particularly interested in essays that challenge dominant narratives of meat-eating and conceptions of animals as resources.

Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to the following:

Meat and nationalism/racism
Meat and colonialism/postcolonialism
The globalisation of meat
Future meat (in vitro etc.)
Meat and ‘the natural’
Meat eating and hospitality/sociality/ritual
Vegan theory
Meat and nostalgia
Unconventional meats: bushmeat, insects etc.
Cannibalism (human and non-human)
Predation/nonhuman meat-eating
Food and abjection
The edible and the inedible
Sacrifice
Meat eating and extinction
Flesh/protein/masculinities
Revisiting the sexual politics of meat
Meat and ‘disordered’ eating
Meat production and climate change
Dietary orientations towards meat: veganism, pescatarianism, paleo diets
Meat substitutes/simulated meats
Carnophallogocentrism
Hunting/fishing
Animal escapees
Spaces of meat production (slaughterhouses, farms etc.)
Meat and zoonosis

The volume will be submitted to Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature:

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14649

Please send abstracts of 300 words along with a brief biographical statement to Seán McCorry (s.mccorry@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by Monday, January 23 rd 2017. Essays of approximately 7000 words in length will be commissioned for delivery in September 2017.

Other books from the same series:

Environmental ethics in V4 countries (conference)

Aug30

The conference aims to create a space for discussion of experts from the V4 countries on current issues concerning environmental ethics. The V4 countries share a similar socialist past which influenced the perceived value of environment still underestimated by many and seen as a mere source of raw materials. Proposed themes:

Animal Rights and Ethics

Despite some legislative changes currently we still face the problem of insufficient reflection on the moral status and rights of animals. In this context it is important to deal with such kind of problems: What should our responsibilities be towards animals? Are animals and humans equal? Do we have to grant to (all) animals moral status?

Nature and Culture, Environmental Ethics in Relation to Science

Many refer to scientific and technological progress as the cause of the present ecological crisis. What should our attitude be towards science and technology in the context of the ecological crisis? Do we have to return to the state of living in harmony with nature? What it really means to live in harmony with nature? Does science really contribute to environmental problems? Is culture contrary to nature?

Values of Environmental Ethics

Values are one of the central categories of environmental ethics. How should we understand the environmental and ecological values? Who/what is the bearer of these values? What are these values in nature? Which values are the most important in environmental ethics?

Deadlines and information:

Deadline for abstract submission – 15. September 2016.

Required abstract length is around 150 words or less.

Online application form can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeAd2V7Icn6aB117lhqd7NJvU6UYu2M2vyizYdA-A3mrS_-VQ/viewform

Information about accepting/rejecting the abstract within a week.

Accepted manuscripts will be published in the proceedings.

Full papers (no longer than 15 normpages) should be delivered until 1. October 2016 via email – enviroethicsv4@gmail.com

Conference fee 20e includes peer reviewed proceedings with ISBN on CD. Bank account number will be available on the web in the beginning of September 2016.

More information regarding the conference venue, conference program will be on the project web site:

https://www.facebook.com/Selected-approaches-to-environmental-ethics-in-V4-countries-271785813164357/

or find via FB @enviroethicsv4
Conference languages include: Slovak, Czech, Polish, English

CARE: Conference on Animal Rights in Europe

Jul7

We are happy to invite you to the first international animal rights conference held in Warsaw, Poland.

29th – 31th July 2016

Our goal is to provide a platform for networking and skill-sharing and to make space for a debate about strategies, visions and paths for the animal rights movement.

We also want to foster solidarity with new organizations that are entering the animal rights movement. We want to empower activists from Eastern Europe and all other countries which do not have a long history of animal advocacy.

3 day program of the conference will feature over 50 lectures and workshops (⅔ of them in English, ⅓ in Polish), structured in blocks:
– Successful Campaigns
– The Psychology of Eating Meat
– Vegan Campaigning
– The Politics of Animal Rights
– Fundraising
– Psychological hygiene for activists
– Investigations
– Starting an organization
– Corporate Outreach
– Lobbying*
– Effective altruism and animals

We will publish list of speakers and detailed program soon. Please sign up to our newsletter to be the first one to receive updates.
=> http://www.careconf.eu/

Facebook event: CARE: Conference on Animal Rights in Europe

Zoopolis event at University of Winchester, England.

Mar29

Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka are coming to the University of Winchester to discuss their book Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights on Monday, 6 June, 10.00-15.00. Joining them on the panel will be

Sabina M. Lovibond, Emeritus Fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford

Alasdair Cochrane, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Sheffield

Kay Peggs, Professor of Sociology and Animal Studies, University of Winchester

Thomas Nørgaard, Director, Institute for Value Studies, University of Winchester

The event is free will be small in scale (to facilitate discussion) so places are limited. To register please get in touch with Madelaine Leitsberger:

M.Leitsberger.15@unimail.winchester.ac.uk

Towards a Vegan Theory Conference, Oxford, England

Mar28

‘With their skins on them, and … their souls in them’: Towards a Vegan Theory
An Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference
31st May 2016
University of Oxford

Building on the increasing prominence of the ‘animal turn’ in the humanities in the last decade, and the recent publication of Laura Wright’s The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in an Age of Terror (University of Georgia Press, 2015), this conference will seek to ask what kind of place veganism and/or ‘the vegan’ should occupy in our theorizations of human-animal relations, animal studies, and the humanities in general. An increasing number of individuals, particularly in the West, are now identifying as vegan, but the heterogeneity of reasons for doing so – animal suffering, the environment, health, anti-capitalism – suggests a broad, complex, and fertile place from which to rethink ways of being in the world.

As an identity-category based on choice and response, veganism asks difficult questions both of its own coherence, and of identitarian cultural politics and theory. It also, therefore, invites a rethinking of philosophical definitions of humans as the only animal which can respond, opening new ways of conceptualizing or challenging the human/animal binary. How might we articulate our responsibilities to other animals? Further, by challenging the foundations upon which notions of human identity have long been based it provides a framework for rethinking how we relate animal studies to broader postcolonial, feminist, queer and ecocritical theory. Thus, the conference looks to consider how engaging with veganism not just as a diet or lifestyle, but as a set of cognitive co-ordinates, might change current critical-theoretical practices. We therefore invite papers which explore – broadly or narrowly, practically or conceptually – what vegan ways of being in the world might do to our practices of reading. In other words, what might a vegan theory look, read, or sound like? And what is its place in the humanities?

Confirmed speakers include Dr Bob McKay (Sheffield), Prof Sara Salih (Toronto), Prof Jason Edwards (York) and a keynote from Prof Laura Wright (Western Carolina).

https://twitter.com/OxVeganTheory

New Journal – Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling

Jan29

“ANIMAL SENTIENCE is the world’s first journal on animal feeling (and at least two of our editors are vegan). Animal Sentience is free and open to everyone. New articles are being added weekly. Please check it out, and see what leading scholars are saying about animal experiences, fish pain, veterinary responsibility, animal grief, and more.” (Jonathan Balcombe)

Audience

As an interdisciplinary journal, ASent will be of interest to all who are concerned with the current empirical findings on what, when and how nonhuman animals feel, along with the practical, methodological, legal, ethical, sociological, theological and philosophical implications of the findings.

Publication Schedule

Papers will be published online as soon as they have been peer-reviewed, accepted and edited. For citation purposes, the volume number will be the year of publication and the issue number will correspond to the sequential order in which papers appear in the journal. (Quotations can be located by section heading and paragraph number.) The submission process is automated through the Journal’s website.

Editor-in-Chief:	Stevan Harnad, PhD, University of Quebec at Montreal
Associate Editors:	Andrew Rowan, DPhil, Humane Society International
	Jonathan Balcombe, PhD, Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy
Managing/Copy Editor:	Ann Casper, Animals and Society Institute

Link to the Journal.

Call for Papers

Audience

Publication Schedule

Editors