Call for Session Proposals and Abstracts: EACAS Conference 2025 in Berlin, Germany
Deadline: January 31, 2025
The European Association for Critical Animal Studies (EACAS) invites session proposals and abstracts for the upcoming conference, “Actioning Change Through Education: Transforming Human-Animal Relations in Times of Crisis”, to be held in Berlin, Germany from May 2–4, 2025.
The conference will explore meaningful improvements to human-animal relationships with a focus on practical solutions.
Key questions include:
– What role can education play in fostering just relationships between humans and other animals?
– What societal shifts are required for an ethical and sustainable coexistence with nonhuman animals?
– How do we connect different struggles for social justice by addressing how deeply intertwined the well-being of humans, nonhumans and our shared planet is?
– What kind of policy changes and practices are best suited to increase public awareness of the interdependence of human, animal and planetary health?
This conference emphasizes actionable approaches over theoretical discussions. Proposals offering hands-on insights, concrete strategies, and real-world examples are especially encouraged. Bridging academia and practice is essential to driving lasting change.
Possible Topics Include:
– Public education on animal justice and environmental sustainability
– Policy and legal frameworks to protect animals and ecosystems
– The role of media and culture in shaping perceptions of nonhuman animals
– Strategies for promoting plant-based diets and addressing animal exploitation
– Cultivating empathy and raising awareness of interconnectedness with nature
We invite scholars, activists, educators, policymakers, practitioners, and artists to submit proposals focusing on actionable ideas and tangible outcomes.
Submission Guidelines
Session Proposals:
Submit a session proposal (maximum 500 words) along with a brief biography of each session chair to Dr. Kathrin Herrmann, Email: kherrma1@jhu.edu. Sessions are 120 minutes, with formats such as four 20-minute presentations followed by a 10-minute discussion or a panel format.
Abstracts:
Submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) for a 20-minute paper to kherrma1@jhu.edu. Include a separate document with your name, email, institution, and short biography.
Deadline: January 31, 2025.
Decisions will be communicated in mid-February 2025.
Date: 04 December 2023 (Monday) Venue: St Berchmans College, Changanacherry
Dear Scholars, We are pleased to announce an upcoming seminar titled “Exploring the Intersections of Animal Studies: Understanding Animals in Society”. This event aims to encourage meaningful discussions, exchange of ideas, and collaborations in the field of Animal Studies. It will bring together academics, researchers, practitioners, and activists to delve into the various aspects of human-animal relationships and their effects on society.
We welcome original research that explores different aspects of animal studies. Potential topics include but are not limited to: ● Animal Ethics and Welfare ● Human-Animal Interactions ● Animal Cognition and Emotions ● Animals in Literature, Art, and Media ● Animal Agency ● Animal Rights and Legislation ● Animal Agriculture and Food Systems ● Conservation and Biodiversity ● Animals in Medical Research and Testing ● Ethical Dilemmas in Animal Studies ● Animals in Philosophy and Religion ● Animals in Education ● Wildlife and Urban Environments ● Historical Perspectives on Human-Animal Relations ● Animal Rights Activism and Advocacy ● Anthropomorphism and Its Implications
Submission Guidelines: We invite interested participants to submit their original, unpublished research papers that align with the seminar’s theme and topics. Submissions must follow the guidelines below: ● Abstract Submission: Authors should submit an abstract of 250-300 words, outlining the main objectives, methodology, and key findings of their research. ● Full Paper Submission: Upon acceptance of the abstract, authors will be invited to submit their full papers, which should be between 6,000 to 8,000 words (including works cited and appendices). ● Formatting: All submissions must be in English and follow the MLA (Modern Language Association – 9th Edition) style guidelines. ● Submission Email: Please send your abstract and full paper (if accepted) to english@sbcollege.ac.in
Important Dates: ● Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 October 2023 ● Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 25 October 2023 ● Full Paper Submission Deadline: 30 November 2023 ● Seminar Date: 04 December 2023
Registration: Participation in the seminar is open to all interested individuals, particularly faculty members, research scholars, and students of humanities and social sciences.
For International Participants: 35 EUR (For Participation and Paper Presentation)
Publication Opportunities: Selected papers presented during the seminar will have the opportunity to be considered for publication in a special issue of SB Academic Review (subject to peer-review).
Contact Information: For any inquiries or clarifications, please reach out to english@sbcollege.ac.in for updates and further information.
We look forward to your active participation in the Seminar. Together, we aim to better understand the roles of animals in society and the ethical, cultural, and environmental impacts they have.
Thanks to everyone who presented or attended the joint EACAS/Animal Futures conference. Many thanks also to our Estonian hosts. As soon as the talks are available online we well let you know here. Now start thinking about Berlin in 2025!
Mainstream theories of social inequality frequently compartmentalize experiences, but inequality rarely works that way in real life. Instead, individuals are comprised of many different identities at once, and these identities will interact with one another in unique ways. Furthermore, multiple systems and institutions are simultaneously at work in a given society. This schema is known as intersectionality, and it is a concept that emerges out of Black feminist thought.
In animal studies, vegan scholars employ this framework to argue that one’s life chances will be shaped, not just by one’s race, class, or gender, but also by their species. Vegan scholars also recognize the influence of an additional system….human supremacy. Historical constructions of race, class, gender, and other identities shape how animals are thought about and how they are treated. Sociologists interested in human justice, meanwhile, would benefit from recognizing how human oppression is always shaped by processes of species inequality.
Given that species, class, race, gender, and other identity categories are all historically constructed using similar mechanisms (such as animalization, objectification, sexualization, depersonalization, denaming, and so on), it is important to apply an intersectional perspective to achieve a more accurate understanding of oppression for nonhuman animals and humans alike. In the fourth annual meeting of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists, we take on this important task, one that is fundamental to vegan sociological theory.
Submission Guidelines
The 2023 IAVS annual meeting will showcase research related to veganism, animal rights, and theories of intersectionality. We welcome submissions for individual presentations (15 minutes and an additional 5 for questions) or panels (45 minutes with 15 for questions) to be delivered in an online format.
Please note that all submissions should fall within the guidelines of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. We are only accepting sociological submissions; submissions that lack a clear sociological focus will not be included. To that end, all submissions must include a one or two sentence rationale clarifying how the submission aligns with sociological theory or practice.
This online conference, organised by the International Association of Vegan Sociologists will be held online and will accommodate North American, European, and Australian time zones. Proposals and queries should be sent to info@vegansociology.com by 1st June. It is expected that all potential presenters have familiarised themselves with the principles of IAVS and plan their presentations with these in mind.
Editor: Mathilde van Dijk (University of Groningen)
Power over the animals has been a characteristic of saints from their beginnings in the Early Church. By no means restricted to Christian saints, but including similar figures in other religions, this volume will explore how the connection between those very special humans and animals is constructed: the saint as a human rising beyond humanity, touching the divine, and the animal as a creature, which is connected to and yet removed from humanity. In how far do these creatures have agency like a human? The existence of animal trials would suggest that they do, but does this go for all animals in the same way? The volume will also explore the symbolic value of animals, how they function as symbols of virtues and vices, and the educational uses of both saints and animals: how were saints, in their connections to animals, portrayed as being models, or, for that matter, how did the animals function in this respect?
This volume will operate on the cusp of two most exciting fields: hagiographical and animal studies. Although present from the seventeenth century at least, hagiographical studies became a main part of cultural historical studies since the 1960s. More recently, animal studies began to flourish, under the influence of genetic and ethological research, which minimizes the boundaries between humans and animals, and the current ecological crisis, in which the status of humankind as the lord of Creation is questioned increasingly.
The editors of the Hagiography Society Book Series i.e. Sanctity in Global Perspective expressed an interest in publishing this volume.
Please send your abstracts by September 15th, 2022 to mathilde.van.dijk@rug.nl.
“The first meeting of NAACAS, which was to take place in May 2020 in Kelowna, B.C., was canceled due to Covid-19.
Two years later, and given the ongoing pandemic, we are organizing a small, hybrid workshop on the conference theme of mass extinction, to take place in Toronto, Ontario (Raccoon Capital of the World), August 11 – 12, 2022. We are limiting in-person participation in the workshop due to the pandemic but videos of presentations will be available on the NAACAS website after the event. In addition, proceedings from the workshop will be available open access in the first 2023 issue of Animal Studies Journal.
The topic of the first meeting of NAACAS will be Critical Animal Studies Perspectives on Extinction, and it will include a remotely-delivered keynote presentation by extinction studies scholar Ursula Heise.
The Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Debrecen, Hungary invites you to participate in the conference titled
THE VIEW FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE: EXPLORING THE HUMAN EPOCH FROM POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVES
on 15-16 October 2022
“If the sadness of life makes you tired And the failures of man make you sigh You can look to the time soon arriving When this noble experiment winds down and calls it a day”
In this age of ecological, economic and social crises,
the notion of the Anthropocene is becoming ever more significant. Proposed by
Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in 2000, the Anthropocene as a new
geological epoch highlights detrimental human impact on the planet, while as a
critical notion it synthetises anti-, non- or post-anthropocentric views
challenging the dominant discourses and practices that place humans at the
centre of the world. However, with its scope incessantly expanding and its
meanings ever in flux, the Anthropocene requires constant redefinition and
reassessment. So far it has been criticised for its ideological implications
and several terms such as Plantationocene (Haraway 2015), Capitalocene (Moore
2016, Davies 2016), and Occidentalocene (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017) have been
offered as alternatives. Yet could we define the Anthropocene and its
implications more clearly and harmoniously? Above all, it is an urgent warning
about the future of ecosystems, cultures and societies alike, forcing us to
realise that “we are embedded in various social, economic,
and—especially—ecological contexts that are inseparably connected” (Kersten
2013). Addressing the need for coherence across versatile approaches, the
conference calls for a transdisciplinary investigation of the challenges of our
age.
We also realise that the Anthropocene must be acted upon, although its cry for action is crippling. As Judy Wilson put it during one of the panel discussions at COP26, “the human epoch is not only external, it is also internal”, for it not only denotes a number of ecological and social crises – including climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution, poverty and starvation in the global south, causing waves of migration which in turn fuel global conflict –, but it also involves anxiety and apathy that render us passive in the face of these crises. As Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna put it, it seems “as though humanity is being lethargic – waiting for the end of the film, when the heroes arrive to sort everything out, and we can all live happily ever after” (2018).
The conference aims to address some of the
controversies, the lethargy and (wilful) ignorance that conceal the
significance of the Anthropocene, exploring the notion itself as well as its
theoretical and practical challenges from the perspectives of posthumanism,
animal studies, ecocriticism and any other approaches that question
anthropocentrism from their respective viewpoints. We invite proposals that may
address, yet are not restricted to, the following topics:
Critiques of and
conceptual alternatives to the Anthropocene—Donna Haraway’s ‘Cthulhucene’,
JasonMoore’s ‘Capitalocene’, Bernard Stiegler’s ‘neganthropocene’ and the like
Cli-fi, dystopian
and/or utopian responses to climate change
Speculative and fantastic
fiction related to the Anthropocene
Eco-anxiety
Fantastic texts
exploring indigenous worldviews on ecology
Literary fiction or
other media that interrogate humanity’s relationship with other lifeforms
Literary fiction or
other media that question the human/animal boundary
Human-Animal
Studies, Literary and Cultural Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal
Studies
The non- and
posthuman other (animals, plants, monsters, aliens, artificial intelligence) in
art, literature, cinema and other media
Nonhuman
perspectives in literature and cinema; the nonhuman gaze
Non-anthropocentric
spaces and temporalities in literature and cinema
Ecocriticism,
environmental humanities, deep ecology and ecosophy
Eco-horror;
aesthetics and themes
Bioethical considerations
Posthumanism, post-
and transhumanist frameworks, posthumanist ethics
Anti-humanism,
meta-humanism
Speculative realism,
object-oriented ontologies, new materialism, post-anthropocentric
ecologytheories, theories of social assemblage
Object-oriented art;
bioart, microbial art
Eco-art,
eco-literature, eco-media, eco-cinema
Confirmed plenary speakers include Márk Horváth and
Ádám Lovász who will give a talk on the post-anthropocentric turn, and László
Nemes, who will speak about his current inquiry into the ethics of
de-extinction. Accompanying programmes will include a roundtable discussion
addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene, with participants from various
fields including philosophy, literary and film criticism, biology, and
psychology; a photography exhibition; and a multimedia art event organised by
the members of Művészek a klímatudatosságért (Artists for Climate Awareness).
With these programmes we hope to turn the collective experience of inertia
symptomatic of the Anthropocene into awareness, new forms of agency, and action.
“Time has come now to stop being human Time to find a new creature to be Be a fish or a weed or a sparrow For the earth has grown tired and all of your time has expired.” (Thinking Fellers Union Local 282: “Noble Experiment”)
Technical details:
The conference is planned as an on-site event, to be
held in English and Hungarian, on 15-16 October 2022 at the University of
Debrecen. Depending on the dynamics of the pandemic, we will nevertheless adapt
and consider moving parts of or the whole conference to a digital platform.
Participants will be informed about any changes via email in due time.
Please send a 250 word abstract of your
proposed paper with a brief, max. 100 word biography to theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com
by June 30, 2022. Those who wish to present in Hungarian are also
welcome, but are kindly asked to include an English version of their abstract
and mini bio in their application. Responses will be given by July 31, 2022.
It is intended that a selection of the papers based on
the conference presentations will be published, either in a separate collection
of articles or a thematic volume in a scholarly journal.
Organising committee:
Zsófia Novák and Borbála László (PhD students, Department of British Studies, IEAS, UD);
Tamás Bényei, DSc (professor, Department of British Studies, IEAS, UD);
György Kalmár, PhD (reader, Department of British Studies, IEAS, UD).
