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2nd Call for Papers
 
MEET ANIMAL MEAT

May 21-23, 2009

Conference
Center for Gender Research
Uppsala University

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)
•    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: [log in to unmask]  
To register: http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/meetanimalmeat
 
 
 
Helena Pedersen, FD/PhD
Centre for Gender Research
Uppsala University
P.O.Box 634
SE-751 26 Uppsala