Minding Animals Conference 3

The third Minding Animals Conference will be held in New Delhi, 13 to 20 January, 2015, hosted by the Wildlife Trust of India, in collaboration with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Conference will be Vegan with an Indian cuisine.

Plenary Speakers to be announced

The Inaugural Marti Kheel Memorial Lecture

Marti Kheel was a leading ecofeminist who died in November, 2011. Marti was on the steering committee to establish a second Minding Animals Conference after the first in Newcastle in 2009. She was then on the first Board when Minding Animals International was established in 2010 and was actively engaged in moving our organisation forward.

A conference was held in 2012 honouring the life and to continue the work of Marti Kheel. Finding a Niche for All Animals was a highly successful event organised by Carol Adams and Lori Gruen. Here are some words about Marti taken from the conference website:

“Marti brought active critical attention to standard approaches to other than human animal liberation philosophy by pointing out the overly rational and isolating perspective it so often takes. She focused her keen eye on environmental philosophers as well, including some ecofeminist philosophers, who while attending to whole systems and relations, generally ignored the lives of individual animals — other than human beings who have families and friends and who suffer horribly not only by our actions but through our willful neglect. Marti’s scholarship drew on connections and brought out new possibilities for living more harmoniously with the movements of the natural world. Throughout her writing Marti advocated a nonviolent, emotionally responsive, holistic, and nondominative ethic by which humans may live in harmony with nature and nonhuman creatures. Her life, like her work, was fully engaged; she didn’t just theorise about nonviolence and care, but she lived and died by those values.”

The Inaugural Marti Kheel Memorial Lecture will be delivered in New Delhi by Lori Gruen to further celebrate Marti’s life and work. Lori will be introduced by Carol Adams, one of Marti’s close friends and colleagues.

Lori Gruen is Professor of Philosophy, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University where she also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Her work lies at the intersection of ethical theory and practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations, for example, women, people of colour, nonhuman animals. She has published and lectured extensively on topics in animal ethics, ecofeminism, and practical ethics more broadly. She is the author of two books on animal ethics, most recently Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2011); the editor of five books, including Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth with Carol J. Adams (Bloomsbury, 2014) and the Ethics of Captivity (Oxford, 2014); and the author of dozens of articles and book chapters. She is currently writing a book exploring the ethical and epistemological issues raised by human relations to captive chimpanzees. For more information, please go to www.lorigruen.com.

Some of our other Plenary Speakers

Lisa Kemmerer
Lisa Kemmerer is a philosopher activist who has been working on behalf of the environment, nonhuman animals, and disempowered human beings for more than thirty years. A graduate of Reed, Harvard, and Glasgow Universities, she is the author of a handful of books, including Animals and World Religions and Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice. You can learn more about her her work at www.lisakemmerer.com

Erica Fudge
Erica Fudge is Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, and was Director of Research for English, Creative Writing and Journalism there from 2011 to 2014. Her academic research focusses on historical human animal relations, with particular interest in the early modern period, and has written on the place and representation of animals in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; on philosophical debates about animal reason and concepts of animal interiority in the period; on animal things; and, on human livestock relations. She has also published on the implications of bringing animals in to historical research. As well as this academic work, Erica has written about human animal relations in historical and contemporary culture for a wider public in her books Animal and Pets, and in the magazine History Today. She is the Director of the British Animal Studies Network, the leading network for those inside and beyond academia who are working on, and with, animals which meets twice a year and is based at the University of Strathclyde.

Claire Jean Kim
Claire Jean Kim is Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies. She teaches classes on race, multiculturalism, minority politics, social movements, immigration, and human animal studies. Her first book, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) won two awards from the American Political Science Association: the Ralph Bunche Award for the Best Book on Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism, and the Best Book Award from the Organized Section on Race and Ethnicity. Her forthcoming book, Race, Species and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press, 2014), examines the intersection of race and species in impassioned disputes over how immigrants of colour, racialised minorities, and Native people use animals in their cultural traditions. Kim has also written numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is the recipient of a grant from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and has been a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Kim is an Associate Editor of American Quarterly and the co-guest editor of a special issue of American Quarterly, Species/Race/Sex (September 2013).

Tentative Schedule for MAC3 in 2015

13 January – Interfaith Service, Opening of Registrations and Welcome
14 January – Opening of Conference and Keynote Address, Protecting the Animals Seminar Series, and Opening of Arts Festival
15 and 16 January – Conference continues
17 and 18 January – a weekend of special events, including a Critical Animal Studies Satellite Event
19 January – Conference continues
20 January – Conference concludes

Themes

Theme 1 – Animals and Religion
Theme 2 – Wildlife Welfare and Conservation Science
Theme 3 – Women and Animals
Theme 4 – Animal Law and Public Policy
Theme 5 – Animals and Culture
Theme 6 – Animals and the Humanities

More info : http://mindinganimals.com/mai3-conference/

Call for papers will be out late February

Minding animals Bulletin 20