Category: Empathy

CFP: Phenomenology of Animality – Studia Phaenomenologica XVII (2017)

Studia Phaenomenologica XVII (2017) – Phenomenology of Animality

Info : http://www.phenomenology.ro/studia_2017/

The 2017 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica will be devoted to the phenomenology of animality. This area can be approached in at least two different ways: one can explore the fruitfulness of the problem of animal being by starting from the fundamental questions of phenomenology; or one can start from issues related to animal philosophy, and explore the explanatory potential of phenomenology in relation to this area.

Depending on the approach taken, the volume’s topic can therefore be understood either as a “phenomenology of animality” which focuses on the distinctive methodology of the phenomenological approach to the animal, or as a “phenomenology of animality” which focuses on the thematic specificity of the animal problem within the vast field of phenomenology. Thus, one might ask, on the one hand, what function can have the phenomenon of animal life within the general framework of a phenomenological research program, whether this is transcendental, ontological, hermeneutical or ethical. And, on the other hand, one might investigate the role phenomenology as such plays in the context of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary contemporary debates about the animal which engage perspectives from biology, animal psychology, ethology, law, etc.

Accordingly, there are two intertwined questions here, and both are equally important: one refers to the significance of the animal being for phenomenology, while the other is related to the significance of phenomenology for the current field of “animal philosophy”. But then, what does the specificity of the phenomenological approach to the animal consist in? How can one identify the dimensions that distinguish and individualize the phenomenological approach in contrast to other forms of animal philosophy? By virtue of which exactly is an approach to the animal a phenomenological one?

Given the fact that the history of phenomenology reveals multifarious approaches to the animal, and thus we are not dealing with one phenomenology of animality, but with a plurality of phenomenologies, one should perhaps attempt to identify a common core or at least central factors that give coherence and unity to this field.

If the phenomenological approach must by definition be carried out in the first person, focusing in a strictly descriptive way on what is given and on what shows itself, and if, furthermore, its paramount task is that of uncovering both the structure of subjective experience and the constitutive structures of the described phenomena, then the same requirements have to be applied to the question of the animal and the diverse experiences we have with animals.

Thus, first, the phase of phenomenological reduction requires a preliminary bracketing of all scientific or philosophical theories about animals in general; in other words, phenomenology should attempt to disregard from the beginning any traditional understanding of the animal that may divert or blur the phenomenological sight.

Second, as an essentially methodical approach, phenomenology raises the question regarding the conditions of access to the being of the animal or to the animal world; from this perspective, it constantly produces a critical discourse highlighting the limits of empathy and the risks of transfer meaning from the human to the animal sphere.

Third, phenomenology starts from everyday experience of and with animals, and investigates the concrete ways these are given to us in our world of factical life, avoiding any artificial construct such as a laboratory setting.

And finally, in virtue of its originally eidetic character, phenomenology focuses on the question of the essence of the animal, the problem of the animality, and the essential structures relating the human and the animal spheres of experience.

Articles can be submitted in English, French, and German. The submissions should comply with the following guidelines: http://www.zetabooks.com/media/wysiwyg/Journals/2016_SP_FORMAL_EDITORIAL_RULES.pdf

EXTENDED DEADLINE : 15 January, 2017.

The papers should be sent to: submissions@phenomenology.ro

 

CFP: Philosophical Ecologies: Considerations of the Animal, the Vegetal and the Environmental

Philosophical Ecologies: Considerations of the Animal, the Vegetal and the Environmental

23rd Annual DePaul University Graduate Student Conference

February 12-13, 2016

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Call for submissions – Deadline: December 1, 2015

Keynote Speaker: Cynthia Willett, Emory University

Recent research in interspecies ethics, the place of plant life, and conceptions of the environmental testifies to escalating concerns regarding the insufficiency of existing interrogations into the historical privileging of some forms of life over others. These concerns emerge from a long history of global injustices that have resulted in environmental degradation as well as marginalization of both human and nonhuman populations through such practices as speciation, colonization, feminization, criminalization and dehumanization. This conference highlights the particularly urgent need for more rigorously articulated philosophies of the animal, the vegetal, and the environmental and seeks to reconsider conceptual boundaries between natural and artificial spaces and concepts of life. Topics of interest may include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • environmental, animal, or food ethics
  • conceptions of animal, plant, and human life
  • eco-feminism
  • theoretical, political, and/or historical distinctions between the human and the nonhuman
  • environmental politics and policy
  • rights discourse and its application to nonhuman others
  • nature and the polis
  • colonization and environmental exploitation
  • eco-affectivity and interspecies attunements
  • intergenerational environmentalism
  • ethology and communication in animal and plant life
  • environmental aesthetics
  • dehumanization and oppression

Submissions from any area of study addressing these topics are welcome. Papers should be limited to 3,000 words and prepared for blind review. Please include name, university affiliation, and submission title in the body of your email, and send all submissions and inquires to: depaul.philosophy@gmail.com

Critical Animal Studies

See new post for this conference: https://christianebailey.com/critical-animal-studies-2016/

 

Race and Animals – Summer Institute Wesleyan University

Race and Animals – Summer Institute

June 6-17, 2016

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Deadline December 1, 2015

Lori Gruen, Claire Jean Kim, and Timothy Pachirat invite you to apply for “Race and Animals,” a two-week institute to be held June 6-June 17, 2016, hosted by Wesleyan Animal Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

The “Race and Animals” summer institute seeks to foster critical discussions on theoretical, historical, and political understandings of how power works to constitute racialized and animalized subjects.  We encourage applications from:

  1. Those working on current projects addressing the intersection of race studies and animal studies.
  2. Those working on current projects focusing on race who are interested in exploring connections to animal studies.
  3. Those working on current projects focusing on animals who are interested in exploring connections to race studies.

We welcome applications from all fields of study.  Applicants should either have their Ph.D.s or other terminal degrees (e.g., MFAs or JDs) or be advanced graduate students at the ABD stage of their graduate work.

10-12 selected scholars will attend daily lectures and engage in structured daily discussions with the institute organizers and visiting speakers.  They will also have the opportunity to present and receive feedback on their own research.  Required readings will be distributed in advance of the institute.  Participants will be provided with dormitory style housing and will receive $500 each to offset travel expenses.

About the Organizers:

Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy, Chair of Philosophy, and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University.  She also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies.  She is the author of 3 books, including most recently Entangled Empathy (Lantern, 2015); the editor of 5 books, including The Ethics of Captivity (Oxford, 2014) and Ecofeminism:  Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth with Carol J. Adams (Bloomsbury, 2014).  With Kari Weil, she co-edited “Animal Others” a special issue of Hypatia (2012).

Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine, where she teaches classes on comparative race studies, social movements, and human-animal studies.  She is the author of Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge, 2015), Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale, 2000), and numerous essays on race and animals.  In 2013, she co-guest edited a special issue of American Quarterly entitled, Species/Race/Sex.

Timothy Pachirat teaches in the Department of Political Science at UMass Amherst.  His book, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (Yale University Press, 2011), is a widely acclaimed political ethnography of the massive, repetitive killing of animals carried out by a largely immigrant workforce.

About the Visiting Speakers:

Colin Dayan is Professor of English, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities, and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. She is the author most recently of With Dogs at the Edge of Life (forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2015).  She has also authored The Law is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons (Princeton UP, 2011), a Choice Outstanding Academic book; The Story of Cruel and Unusual (MIT/Boston Review Press, 2007); Haiti, History, and the Gods (University of California Press, 1995, 1998; Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe’s Fiction (Oxford University Press, 1987); A Rainbow for the Christian West (University of Massachusetts Press, 1977).

Maria Elena Garcia is director of the Comparative History of Ideas and associate professor in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Brown University and has been a Mellon Fellow at Wesleyan University and Tufts University. Her first book, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru (Stanford, 2005) examines Indigenous and intercultural politics in Peru. Her work on Indigeneity and interspecies politics in the Andes has appeared in multiple edited volumes and journals such as Anthropology Now, Anthropological Quarterly, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Latin American Perspectives, and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. Her second book project, Dancing Guinea Pigs and Other Tales of Race in Peru, examines the intersections of race, species, and capital in contemporary Peru.

Jared Sexton  is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where he is also affiliated with the Department of Film and Media Studies. He has published articles in journals such as African American Review, American Quarterly, Art Journal, Cultural Critique, Radical History Review, and Social Text, and essays in various anthologies on contemporary politics and popular culture. He is the author of Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism and a co-editor of a special issue of Critical Sociology on “Race and the Variations of Discipline,” and has contributed occasional pieces to magazines like Artforum, ColorLines, Jadaliyya, and openDemocracy.

About Wesleyan Animal Studies:

From 2010-2015, Wesleyan Animal Studies, in partnership with The Animals and Society Institute held an annual summer fellowship program for scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies. The fellowship program was started by the Animals and Society Institute (ASI) in 2007 and directed by Margo DeMello; it was hosted by Lori Gruen and Kari Weil since coming to Wesleyan; and over the years funded over 60 fellows. The ASI-WAS Human Animal Studies Fellowship Program will celebrate its 10th year by hosting a conference at Wesleyan in October 2016.

 

For more info : http://www.wesleyan.edu/animalstudies/applications.html

 

Débat aux Sceptiques du Québec : Doit-on manger des animaux?

Doit-on cesser de manger des animaux ?

Débat sur les droits des animaux organisé par Les Sceptiques du Québec (13 août 2015, 19h).

Panélistes : Christiane Bailey, doctorante en philosophie, Université de Montréal ; Cyrille Barrette, professeur émérite de biologie, Université Laval ; Dany Plouffe, docteur en physique, Université McGill ; Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, professeur titulaire, Faculté de médecine vétérinaire, Université de Montréal.

Animaux

La question des droits à accorder aux animaux est vaste. Pensons aux animaux d’élevage, de compagnie ou de laboratoire, et aux animaux sauvages, en cage ou dans la nature. Nous pouvons aussi considérer des droits distincts pour différents types d’animaux : mammifères, oiseaux, poissons, reptiles, crustacés, insectes, etc..

La question en titre n’aborde qu’un aspect de ce sujet complexe aux multiples répercussions dans notre vie quotidienne. La discussion en couvrira beaucoup d’autres. En plus de l’aspect éthique, il y a des considérations écologiques, physiologiques, génétiques, médicales, géographiques et bien d’autres à prendre en compte.

Récemment, le gouvernement du Québec a déposé un projet de loi qui modifiera le statut juridique des animaux de “biens meubles” à “êtres vivants doués de sensibilité” dans le but d’améliorer leur sort. En fait-on assez pour réduire la souffrance animale ?

Endroit : 1225 Saint-Joseph Est, Montréal

Nouvelle salle pour les conférences :Salle les conférences sceptiques le 13 des mois de septembre à juin (à 19 heures) se tiennent maintenant au :

Centre humaniste
1225, boul. Saint-Joseph Est
Montréal (Québec)  H2J 2L3

Près de la station de métro Laurier (sortie St-Joseph – sud).
Stationnement sur les rues avoisinantes.

Carte géographique : Centre humaniste

Heure et prix d’entrée : 19h00 – membre 5 $ – non-membre 10 $

La conférence débute à 19h00. Les portes ouvriront à 18h30 pour les personnes qui désireront bavarder avec nous.

Le prix d’entrée est de 5 $ pour les membres et de 10 $ pour les non-membres. Le coût pour devenir membre est de 20 $ par année. Prix réduits de moitié pour les étudiants (sur place).

Profitez-en pour inviter!

Lors de nos soirées, les membres peuvent inviter pour 5 $ une personne non membre de leur choix. Notez qu’une personne non membre ne peut être admise comme membre invité qu’une seule fois.

Visitez la Page facebook des Sceptiques.
Événement facebook (par All Animals are Free)

Queering Animal Liberation. Call for Contributions

Queering Animal Liberation. Call for Contributions

VINE Press invites proposals for contributions to a forthcoming anthology, tentatively entitled “Queering Animal Liberation.” This ground-breaking volume will include chapters by activists, artists, and scholars all focused on the intersection between speciesism and homo/transphobia or, on the upside, linkages between the struggles for queer and animal liberation.

  • Essays illustrating or analyzing some conjunction of speciesism and homophobia or transphobia;
  • Reports and reflections on relevant activist campaigns;
  • Creative responses (artwork, poetry, comix, etc.) to the queer-animal intersection;
  • Meditations on whether and how we might “queer” animal liberation and/or “animate” struggles for social justice;
  • “Translations” of relevant work in the emerging academic area of critical animal studies, phrased so as to make that work both accessible and useful to activists and others outside of academia;
  • Works we can’t even imagine but turn out to be right on time.

How to Propose a Contribution

See VINE Call for Contribution for more information.

Note: VINE Press also publishes a zine, Plant-Powered People: Voices from the Intersections, which soon will be publishing a special issue devoted to the idea of “queering” animal liberation. Proposals that might be a better match for the zine than the anthology will be passed along to its compiler.

About the Editors

editors

Miriam Jones is a cofounder of VINE Sanctuary whose previous activist work includes LGBTQ liberation, feminist, and disability rights work. A former English teacher, Miriam is a skilled editor, proofreader, and project manager. (Fun fact about VINE: The sanctuary was initially funded by the proceeds of a proofreading and editing service run by Miriam and pattrice.) Her own poetry has been published in numerous literary journals, and she also contributed and essay to the recent anthology, The Ethics of Captivity, edited by Lori Gruen.

Christopher-Sebastian McJetters is a copyeditor by trade as well as a staff writer at Vegan Publishers. He lectures part-time on speciesism at Columbia University, and he also organizes events and discussions exploring the intersection of racism and speciesism. He writes for the blog Striving With Systems and has contributed to the recent anthology, Circles of Compassion: Connecting Issues of Justice, edited by Will Tuttle.

pattrice jones is a cofounder of VINE Sanctuary whose previous activist work includes tenant organizing, antiracist education, and direct action against AIDS. As a former writing instructor and longtime editor, pattrice is skilled in helping both novice and expert writers bring their own voices onto the page. Anthologies in which pattrice’s own essays appear include Ecofeminism (Bloomsbury, 2014); Confronting Animal Exploitation (McFarland, 2013); Sister Species (University of Illinois Press, 2011); Minding the Animal Psyche (Spring, 2010); Sistah Vegan (Lantern, 2010); Contemporary Anarchist Studies (Routledge, 2009); Igniting a Revolution (AK Press, 2006); Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? (Lantern, 2004); and Sustainable Development and Southern Realities (SDPI, 2003).

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Two other members of the VINE team, Aram Polster and Brandie Skorker, will advise the editors at two key junctures —determining the final line-up of contributions and assessing the overall publication prior to going to press —and also will be available for consultation concerning individual contributions.  A diverse array of VINE advisors in various fields of academic and activist endeavor also will be consulted on an as-needed basis and/or invited to review the volume before it goes to press.

 

 

About the Publisher

VINE Press is a project of VINE Sanctuary, which is an LGBTQ farmed animal sanctuary. Any profits associated with VINE Press titles will be used to fund the educational activities of the sanctuary.

FAQs

Do I need to be LGBTQ to contribute? No. Sincere allies who are sufficiently well-versed in LGBTQ issues to have something to say are welcome to contribute.

Do I need to be a previously-published writer to contribute? No, but you will need to steel yourself for the ego-bruising experience of being edited for publication. We’ll be as nurturing as we can be, but you still may find the process challenging.

I have an idea, but I don’t know if it’s right for the anthology. What should I do? Send as an email at qal@bravebirds.org to start a conversation. We can figure out together whether what you have in mind is a good match for the book.

I’m an LGBTQ vegan and I definitely have opinions that I’d like to express to my non-vegan LGBTQ friends or my non-LGBTQ fellow animal advocates, but I’m not sure I have enough to say to fill an essay. What should I do? Subscribe to the VINE blog, where we will be publishing some prompts to spark folks like you to each write a few sentences, which we will then compile into a chapter for the anthology.

LGBTQ animal advocates are diverse in terms of both identity and opinion. How will you ensure that nobody is left out or misrepresented? VINE’s own LGBTQ community encompasses considerable diversity, including folks who don’t feel well-served by the alphabet soup of descriptors that are themselves rooted in Eurocentric ways of thinking about identity. Our extended editorial team includes lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and genderqueer people and is committed to producing an anthology that reflects and draws sustenance from our differences as well as our similarities. We will share this call for contributions widely. After we have begun to receive proposals, we will begin reaching out to individuals and organizations who might help us fill any gaps in the evolving table of contents.

I have some strong words for other activists. Is that OK? We may ask you to step off the soapbox and say what you have to say in terms likely to be heard by those with whom you disagree (rather than just be applauded by people who already agree with you), but yes: We definitely do want the anthology to confront hard truths and tackle controversial questions. When it comes to persistently anguishing disagreements, we hope to do so in a way that moves contentious conversations forward, rather than leaving everyone mired where they already were. Send us what you’ve got, or an idea of where you want to go, and we’ll take it from there.

What will I get if my contribution is selected for publication? Contributors to this anthology will receive two copies of the book but no monetary compensation. This is standard for both activist and academic anthologies.

Who will hold the copyright to my work if it is selected for publication? You will retain the copyright to your work and therefore will be allowed to share or reprint it as you like.

What about previously published work? If you would like us to consider including previously published work for which you retain the copyright, let us have a look at it. While we probably would not be interested in anything that is widely available already, pieces that were published in print, are not available online, and deserve a wider audience might be appropriate for the anthology.

Do you think this anthology is a good idea?
If so, please contribute to our 2015 Pride Drive, to help fund pre-publication costs.

See VINE Call for Contribution for more information.