Call for Papers – Exploring the Intersections of Animal Studies: Understanding Animals in Society

Oct9

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We invite interested participants to submit their original, unpublished research papers that align with the seminar’s theme and topics.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.

Registration Fee:
BA/MA Students:  Rs. 300/- INR (Participation Only); Rs. 500/- INR (Paper Presentation)
PhD Scholars: Rs. 750/- INR (Participation Only); Rs. 1000/- INR (Paper Presentation)
Faculty Members: Rs. 2000/- INR (Participation Only); Rs. 2500/- INR (Paper Presentation)
Online Attendance: Rs. 3000/- INR (For Participation and Paper Presentation) 

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.

Nithin Varghese
Convenor

Thank you!

Jun20

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!

Welcome delegates!

Jun15

We would love it if delegates to the joint EACAS/Animal Futures Conference this week could make a donation to any of these good causes:

Thank you and enjoy the conference!

Annual Meeting of the International Association of Vegan Sociologist

Mar20

Title: Vegan Intersectionality

Call for Paper Deadline: June 1, 2023

Date: October 7 & 8 2023

Location: Online

Schedule: TBD

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.

Proposal Checklist:

  • Name
  • Affiliation (if any)
  • Preferred email
  • Title of talk
  • Abstract (50-300 words)
  • Sociological relevance (1-2 sentences)

More info: https://www.vegansociology.com/conference/

Call for Papers: Saints and Animals

Sep7

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.

Time Schedule:

September 2022 Abstracts

March 2023 Article, First Draft

September 2023 Article Second Draft

January 2024 Publication

This entry was posted on September 7, 2022, in Calls.

The First Meeting of The North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS)

Jun1

“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.

Thanks to Kelly Struthers Montford for hosting and applying for funding for this event!”

(Taken from NAACAS website)

Join | EACAS.eu

CFP: THE VIEW FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE

Mar7

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).

For more information please visit the event’s Facebook group or contact the organizers at the following e-mail address: theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com.

We are looking forward to welcoming you at the conference!