October 20-22, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

Dislocation is a phenomenon of space, place and time. To dislocate something is to upset, complicate, or displace it. It involves getting things out of place, out of order, and out of time, or to question if things are indeed in their ‘right’ place and time. Dislocating, then, can be disorienting; it can dislodge comfortable assumptions, and it can unsettle, perhaps even painfully, what has gone before. Dislocation invites different perspectives, produces new cartographies, disrupts teleologies. This conference will feature papers and presentations which unsettle the place of law in relation to political, ethical, social, cultural or symbolic orders.

The Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (CILCH) invites you to participate in its 2011 conference on the theme of dis/locating law. The conference is interdisciplinary, drawing together scholars whose research addresses the intersections among culture, the humanities and law, including but not limited to studies of law and literature, law and film/television, cultural practices of regulation, mediation and law, intersections of cultural theory and the legal, alternative visions of legally coded practices, and so on.

This year’s theme is intentionally broad in order to provide an open-ended focus for exploration. The conference is hosted with the goals of stimulating conversations among diverse scholars with shared interests, of continuing to foster the growing community of law, culture and humanities scholars in Canada, and of contributing to a global network of scholarship in these areas.

If you are interested in giving a paper, hosting a roundtable, or offering another form of presentation (either almost finished works or works in progress), please submit a proposal to CILCH @carleton.ca, as follows:

- title of proposed paper/presentation
- 200 word biography of presenter(s)
- contact information for presenter(s)
- an abstract outlining the paper/presentation of a maximum of 300 words
- detail on any technical requirements (data projector, sound system, etc.)

We very much look forward to receiving your proposal and to yet another productive and thought-provoking CILCH gathering.

The deadline for submission is June 15, 2011.

“Critical Animal Studies Beyond Anthropocentrism and Humanism” [PDF]

Please keep in mind that both presentations, especially the one on the OSPCA/THS, are very rough early reports on a work in progress. Readers should avoid drawing too many conclusions on my own views or the consequences of what I’ve written until the works are complete and published. The basics of the argument are correct; however, they are not presented in as much nuance as is required–such is the nature of fifteen minute presentations at conferences.

Launch of ground-breaking Journal of Animal Ethics

A ground-breaking new journal covering the issue of animal ethics has been launched by a US and UK academic partnership with the goal of widening international debate about the moral status of animals.  This month, the University of Illinois Press will publish the pioneering new Journal of Animal Ethics (JAE), the result of years of collaboration between the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the University Press.

The Journal of Animal Ethics, which is to be published bi-annually in the summer and winter, is jointly edited by the internationally known theologian the Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and Professor Priscilla Cohn, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University and Associate Director of the Centre. The JAE is the first academic journal in the world to include the phrase “animal ethics” in its title.

“For far too long, academics have been slow to contribute to the burgeoning public debate about animal ethics. This is an opportunity for them to make their contribution to a multidisciplinary journal that aims to put animal ethics on the academic map” said Professor Andrew Linzey. “We want to ensure that animals receive the academic attention they deserve.”

The Journal comprises: full-length scholarly articles, “argument” pieces in which authors will advance a particular perspective (usually related to current affairs) or respond to a previous article, review or research report, as well as review articles and book reviews.

The JAE is devoted to the exploration of progressive thought about animals and is multidisciplinary in nature and international in scope.  It covers theoretical and applied aspects of animal ethics that will be of interest to academics from both the humanities and the sciences, as well as professionals working in the field of animal protection. It aims to publish ground-breaking work written by new and established academics from a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, ethics, history, law, literature, linguistics, political theory, religion and science.

In the first issue of the JAE:  David M. Lavigne and William S. Lynn address Canada’s commercial seal hunt; Joel Marks writes on how animal suffering is unrecognized in research; Andrew Fenton and Frederic Gilbert question the use of animals in spinal cord research; Judith Benz-Schwarzburg and Andrew Knight examine the cognitive abilities of animals and asks how long they can be denied similar rights to humans; Grace Clement asks whether animals can be classed as “pets or meat”? Barbro Froding, Martin Peterson, and Mark J. Rowlands debate whether animal ethics should be based on friendship, and Jan Deckers and Jay B. McDaniel debate whether Whiteheadians should be vegetarians.

To subscribe to the Journal, please visit the Journal’s website at http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/jane.html. Contributions to the Journal are welcomed and submission guidelines can be found on the JAE’s website.

Three papers stood out as especially excellent. Although, I should disclaim, that the papers that I thought were excellent were also highly scholarly and this likely doesn’t well represent the interests of many of the attendees.  All the same, in order of presentation, I though that the following were the best: Stephen T. Newmyer’s “Some Ancient & Modern Views on the Expression of Grief in Animals,” which compared classical sources on animal emotions to modern cognitive ethology, Don lePan’s ‘Your sufferings, sinless things’: Changing Attitudes Towards Non-Human Animals and the Cattle Plague of 1865,” on the, as the title suggests, the cattle plague and various conflicting responses to the plague (religious/scientific, germ vs. miasma, and so on), and Vasile Stanescu’s “Paper Tigers: Nonviolent “Terrorists” & the Danger of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” on the genealogy of legislative efforts to police animal activism. Michael Loadenthal’s paper on terrorist labelling and Carol Glasser’s paper on changes in the structure of the major institutional actors in the animal movement were suggestive, but require some development. More quantitative analysis is needed in critical animal studies.

Other than one participant–whose antics I sadly missed–constantly yelling out “citation!” and failing to understand discursive norms in philosophy papers and the occasional reference to PETA–which never ceases to upset everyone–the sessions all ran smoothly. For my part, I didn’t enjoy the standard format adopted by the sessions. That is, fifteen minute paper followed by five minutes of questions/discussions. I much prefer the standard academic conference format of the three papers followed by general discussion for the second half of the session. This preference may be entirely idiosyncratic, however.

I was overwhelmed with the response to my own presentations (the full text of which I’ll post later once I edit them to reflect what I actually ended up saying). Both sessions were very well attended. The second session, first thing in the morning on Friday, was standing-room only, with people spilling out into the hallway. I was pleased to see the number of people not from an academic background at my first paper, on the conflict between the OSPCA and the Toronto Humane Society–there were representatives from various dissident groups in Toronto, some young women involved in feral cat work in the Niagara and Western New York region, and an older gentleman from Florida who runs a high volume spay/neuter clinic. (Unfortunately, the PETA derailment to which I referred above happened during this session.) The second presentation, on my ongoing critique of the theoretical basis of critical animal studies, went very well as well. The session was eloquently introduced by David Clarke, of McMaster, and featured papers from Eric Jonas of Northwestern University (and Deconstruction, Inc.) and Valery Giroux of the University of Montreal. I was surprised by two sets of comments on this paper. First, why would I bother wasting time criticizing Peter Singer and Tom Regan? Second, why won’t I write a take-down of Gary Francione?

This two-day conference will explore a variety of issues concerning the current and historical situation of nonhuman animals and interactions with humans.
The Department is organizing this conference with the assistance of the Office of the Dean of Social Sciences, the Departments of English, Political Science, History and Visual Arts, the MA Programme in Critical Sociology, and the MA Programme in Social Justice and Equity Studies.

We are especially pleased to be hosting this conference in association with the Institute of Critical Animal Studies as the 10th annual ICAS conference. As with past conferences, we welcome participation from both activists and academics.  The conference will be completely vegan.

Please send a short proposal (2-3 paragraphs or enough details to describe your idea) to:
ac2011@BrockU.CA
Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2011

We will consider proposals on any relevant topics but some suggestions include:

• Animal exploitation industries (economic, environmental, ethical aspects)
• Analyzing Industry Propaganda
• Undercover investigations
• Anarchy and animals
• Animals in War
• Current campaigns and issues in animal rights activism
• Sanctuaries
• Humane education
• Horse Slaughter in Canada: Cashing in on US Legislation
• Captivity: Animals in zoos and ?marine parks?
• Vivisection and animals in scientific research
• Biotechnology and animals
• Historical understandings of animals
• Animal rights history
• Animal rights and social justice
• Wildlife conservation and animal protection
• Companion animals
• Veganism and Vegetarianism
• Meat and gender identities
• Animals, labour and the working class
• Compassion, empathy, solidarity
• Animals and human identities
• Wildlife trade
• Social construction of animals
• What animals think
• Images of animals and animal activists
• Developing animal rights activism and creating cultures of compassion

Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert

Lorna Weir & Eric Mykhalovskiy

Rutledge, 2010

Global Public Health Vigilance is the first social science book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities perceive and respond to international threats to human health. Between 1995 and 2005 a new form of global health surveillance was invented, international communicable disease control was made a matter of international security, and international health law was fundamentally revised. Drawing on research conducted at the World Health Organization and the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (Ottawa), the authors analyze the formation of a social apparatus ‐ global public health vigilance ‐ for detecting, responding to and containing international public health emergencies.

This timely volume explores a remarkable period of conceptual innovation in global public health. From the late nineteenth century international public health organizations were legally charged with preventing the international transmission of a small number of infectious diseases. Today the World Health Organization is charged with preventing international public health emergencies, a concept that includes infectious diseases and biological, chemical, environmental, industrial, and radiological disasters. This has brought unprecedented responsibilities to public health authorities, helping to shape a novel project of global public health security.

The authors raise critical questions about the concept of emerging infectious diseases and its institutional the role of the news media in global health surveillance, the impact of changes in international health law on public health reasoning and practice, and the reconstitution of the World Health Organization as a power beyond both national sovereignty and global governance. Global Public Health Vigilance initiates a new research agenda for social science research on public health.

“The animal in man no longer has any value as the sign of a Beyond; it has become his madness, without a relation to anything but itself; his madness in the state of nature.”

“it is a technique of training, of dressage, that ‘despotically excludes in everything the least representation, and the smallest murmur’…”

“for millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.”

Michel Foucault, History of Madness; Discipline and Punish; and The Will to Knowledge.

Michel Foucault had much to say on many things, and the legacy of his thinking can be found across a diverse range of fields of inquiry, including philosophy, sociology, psychology, history, politics, architecture, health sciences, ethics and sexuality.

Yet Foucault says very little about animals. And perhaps, as a consequence, while Foucault would seem to be everywhere in social and political theory, the impact of his work is yet to be fully appreciated within the emerging field of animal studies. As has been shown in recent critical engagements with Foucault that have drawn connections with animal life, including those of Giorgio Agamben, Donna Haraway, and Roberto Esposito, Foucault’s work is extremely profitable for understanding our conflicted relationships with animals. More than another of the endless applications of his work, we believe this conjunction to be essential: both for the advancement of a new field struggling with questions of power, knowledge, and ethics; and for the study of a philosopher whose antihumanism failed to interrogate the category of species.

We are seeking abstracts from scholars engaged with Foucault and animal studies for a proposed edited book collection.

The collection will be unashamedly critical in approach, seeking to include articles that challenge systems of power which simultaneously organise conduct, violence, care and domination of nonhuman animals, from wildlife parks to factory farms. However, we also recognize there is an urgent need for indepth, inter-disciplinary theorisation that is able to map and challenge the lines of distinction between human and animal. We therefore encourage submissions from scholars working in a range of disciplines, interested in how Foucault might be used to consider human and animal relations in a broad sense. We welcome not only philosophical discussion but analysis of science, policy, and activist praxis. We encourage not simply the transfer of Foucauldian concepts but their effective adaptation to multispecies contexts.

Suggested topic areas include:

• Biopolitics;
• Ethics and the care of the self;
• Power and the political;
• Discourse and knowledge;
• Governmentality and conduct;
• Sovereignty and security;
• History of biology and science;
• Discipline, training and communication;
• Panopticism, surveillance, gaze, spectacle;
• Sexuality;
• Animal subjectivities;
• Heterotopias of interspecies contact;
• The animality of humanity;
• Humanism, language and the border of species.

For abstract submissions (of 500 words), or to discuss proposed contributions, please email either Matthew Chrulew at mchrulew@gmail.com or Dinesh Wadiwel at dwadiwel@gmail.com.

Abstract deadline: 28th February 2010.
Projected completed book chapter deadline: late 2010.

March 19-20, 2010
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistic legal scholarship.  The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory, jurisprudence, law and cultural studies, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics.  We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, ideals, values, authority, obligation, justice, and about law¹s place in culture.

We will be accepting proposals for panels, roundtables, papers, and volunteers for chairs and discussants from July 15th until October 15th 2009.

PLEASE NOTE: To submit proposals, please go to the online submission site https://www.regonline.com/13thAnnual

As it becomes available, additional information about accommodations and other conference matters, will be posted to the, “ASLCH Annual Conference Information” page on the ASLCH webpage at http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/centers/lch/conference.html.

We welcome submissions on any law, culture and humanities subject.  Examples of recent panel topics include:  Imagining Rights in the Era of Globalization; The Child as a Legal Subject; Law and Love; The Color of Justice; The Cultural Lives of the Judiciary; Law and the Sacred; E.M. Forster and the Question of Social Justice; Thinking about Places and Spaces; Feminism v. Feminism:  Conceptions of Justice in Transnational Criminal Law; South African Dignity Jurisprudence; Film as Legal Text.

We invite scholars with interests across the range of areas in Law, Culture and the Humanities to organize panels, performance pieces, screenings, or to submit proposals for individual paper presentations.

We urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and we hope to encourage a variety of formats such as roundtables, sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper or issue or sessions in which the chair presents the papers and their authors respond. We invite proposals for sessions in which the focus is on pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus onperformance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).

Ideally, traditional panels should include NO MORE THAN 3 papers. All panel proposals should indicate the name of the chair. In most cases having a separate discussant is desirable. All panels should be planned in such a way that 30 minutes of the one hour and 45 minutes generally allotted for sessions is reserved for discussion/comments by the audience. Proposals must indicate whether a ³smart room² with computer, audio or video presentation technology will be needed. More detailed instructions about participation rules and limits are listed on the first page of the online conference submission system.

We would also welcome you to volunteer to serve as a chair and/or discussant, whether you are submitting a paper proposal or not.  If you would like to serve as a chair and/or discussant, please indicate the areas or subjects of your interest/expertise.

Participants will be notified of their acceptance by December 31st 2009. We cannot promise that we will be able to accommodate all proposals.

Questions, please contact Linda Meyer (Linda.Meyer@quinnipiac.edu)

3rd Biennial Conference of the
Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and the Humanities
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

16-18 October, 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

How are visions – visions of futures, premonitions, and capacities of seeing and recognizing – negotiated in law and culture? If law is “the projection of an imagined future upon reality” (R. Cover), how are contestations about laws tied to disputes about visions of alternative futures? Who are our visionaries? Whose voices are heard and amplified in our contestations over law, culture, and alternative futures? How does the law both give and silence voice? How do we give voice to our visions – in politics, in literature, in film, in media, in courtrooms? This conference invites papers that address the themes of vision and voice through interdisciplinary research in law, culture, and humanities.

The Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and the Humanities (CILCH) invites you to add your voice and share your vision on a subject related to law, culture and the humanities at our 3rd biennial conference to be held at Carleton University in Ottawa.

The conference will be interdisciplinary, bringing together scholars whose research addresses the intersections among culture, the humanities and law. The theme of Vision and Voice is intended to provide an open-ended focus for exploring these interrelationships. The conference will be eclectic, hosted with the goals of stimulating discussion among diverse scholars with common interests, of fostering the growing community of law, culture and humanities scholars in Canada, and of contributing to an emerging global network of law, culture and humanities scholarship. Thanks to the amazing participants and the superb work they presented, our previous events were exhilarating and very enjoyable.

If you are interested in giving a paper or some other form of presentation, please submit a proposal to CILCH@carleton.ca containing the following information:

- title of proposed paper/presentation
- biographic and contact information about the presenter(s)
- abstract of paper/presentation (maximum 300 words)
- information on any technical requirements

If you would like to submit a proposal for a panel of presentations or a roundtable, please provide the information listed above including the names and biographic information for all of the presenters. We are interested in works in progress, as well as more finished papers.

We intend to apply for funding for the conference from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). If you would like to be included in the funding application (this would make you eligible for some travel funds to participate in the conference), please submit your proposal to us by May 29th, 2009. Those who do not wish to be included in the SSHRC application or are unable to submit by the May deadline, please send us your proposal by July 1st, 2009.

We very much look forward to receiving your proposal and to another productive and thought-provoking gathering.

Host Committee: Logan Atkinson, Sheryl Hamilton, Diana Majury, Neil Sargent, Christiane Wilke

Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and the Humanities

Department of Law
C473 Loeb Building
Carleton University
1125 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6
Canada
cilch@carleton.ca