Thank you,

Eva H.

MEET ANIMAL MEAT

May 21-23, 2009

Conference
Center for Gender Research
Uppsala University
SWEDEN

Informed by feminist investigations of embodiment and bodiliness, we ask: How do we understand our bodily relationship to other animals? How do we embody animals, and how do animals embody us? How are carnal modes of incorporation, intimacy, and inhabitation kinds of contacts forged between “HumAnimals”? If, as Donna Haraway writes, “animals are everywhere full partners in worlding, in becoming with,” then how do embodied encounters with animal matter necessarily constitute categories of “human” and “animal”? What is the meaning of meat, and the meat of meaning? How do we think and write about human and animal power relations in a way that acknowledges the discursive traffic, the actor-ship, agency, and the life conditions of these differently bounded socio-historical, political populations? How do we attend to the ways that animals and humans co-constitute each other in the flesh? What is the consequence of taking embodiment and corporeality as the starting point of inquiry into questions of relationality? How do we make meat “matter” in cultural/social/political studies of animals, and/or problematize preconceived notions of animals as “food”? How do animal parts and body-matters figure in politico-economic stories, processes, and institutions?

Whether through food practices, performances, infections, body modifications, sexualities, organ transplantations, medical practices, discourses of predation and commodification, spectatorships, and other modalities of incorporation, the conference will critically investigate the embodied and corporeal nature of HumAnimal encounters. We encourage presenters to engage diverse fields of inquiry: animal studies, sociology, futures studies, history, education, literature, philosophy, criminology, race/ethnicity studies, ethnology, anthropology, visual culture, gender/women studies, film/video, science/technology studies, postcolonial studies, art history and studio, political activism, religion and theology, psychology, political science and policy making, landscape architecture and urban planning, performance studies, agriculture, fashion studies, biology studies, and medicine studies.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory and The Pornography of Meat.

Judith Halberstam, author of Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and The Technology of Monsters and In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives,
PROPOSALS:

“Meet Animal Meat” will be divided into two themes: “Feeding” and “In/Corporating.”
The suggested topics/areas of engagement are as follows:

FEEDING

• Meat Consumption
• Food Socialization
• AgriAnimals
• Social Justice
• Representing Meat
• Omnivorousness
• Predation
• Cannibalism
• Vegan/Vegetarianism
• Herbivorousness
• “Bush Meat”
• Macrobiotic
• Fishing
• Religion and Food
• Insectivorousness
• Victimless/In Vitro Meat
• Slaughter and Hunting
• Carnophallogocentrism
• Gendered Consumption and Ecofeminism
• Un/Sustainable Eating
• Human-Eating Animals
• Cultural Histories and Politics of Milk
• Food Geographies
• Becoming Meat

IN/CORPORATING

• Zoontology and Embodiment
• Animals and War
• Speciesism
• Biopower and Animal Industries
• Zooësis and Performativity
• Animal Commodification and BioCapitalism
• Xenotransplantation and Organ Harvesting
• Medical and Laboratory Animals
• Animal Material Culture (Fashion, Cosmetics, Etc.)
• Hormones and Horses
• Gene Pharming
• Zoonoses
• Abjection and Animality
• Sensing Animals (Animal Assisted Therapy/Intervention)
• Racialization
• Companionship and “Pets”
• Bestiality and “Animal Play”
• Animorphs, Zoomorphs and Body Modification
• Zoophilia and Zoophobia
• “Critter Theory” and Becoming Animal
• Symbiosis (Commensalism, Mutualism, Parasitism)

We seek proposals for papers, panels, and other public presentations connecting representation, language, embodiment, animals, consumption, power, and culture. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches; readings of corporeally inflected HumAnimal fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; films, videos, and slide presentations of artwork that explore carnal human and animal encounters; and proposals from outside the academy, including submissions from artists, writers, practitioners, and activists.

20 MINUTE PRESENTATIONS: Proposals for academic presentations should clearly state the argument being set forward and the relevance/significance of this argument for this conference; proposals for creative presentations should indicate the subject addressed and the approach/medium used, and what additional audio/visual/spatial resources will be needed to show/perform the work; proposals for other nontraditional presentations should articulate the unique qualities of the presentation and their connection to the conference theme. Co-authored presentations are also welcome, but only one co-author should submit the proposal, and only 20 minutes will be allotted.

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, and must be received by January 16, 2009. Submissions should include name, affiliation/title, and correspondence address.

For further information email: meetanimalmeat@gender.uu.se
To register: http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/meetanimalmeat

What about vegan pride in the word vegAn. It’s not a dirty word requiring an asterisk. It is a beautiful and peaceful word deliberately crafted by Donald Watson over a half-century ago.