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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.

Presented by the Feminist Research Network (FRN) and the Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO)
Report on proceedings available at: http://www.uowblogs.com/frn/2016/02/22/report-beyond-the-human-feminism-and-the-animal-turn-symposium/

A multidisciplinary approach from behavioral and social sciences
Animals were domesticated thousands of years ago and are now present in almost every human society around the world. Nevertheless, only recently scientists have begun to analyse both positive and negative aspects of human-animal relationships.

Exploring how visibility and invisibility (removal from sight) make us more or less comfortable about different types of animal use by considering how exposure weakens support for animal use and/or leads to increased tolerance of that use.

This conference invites scholars from many disciplines and across cultures to reflect upon the conundrum of meaning: we are same but different. What do animals mean in our personal lives as well as our societal and cultural lives? And how have those relationships been collaborative or at cross-purposes?