Our Hen House

Animal Studies Programs for the Academic Activist

Posted on 25. Mar, 2011 by Nick Laccetti in Class Act

The stereotype of academia as a progressive paradise is pervasive. Indeed, you would think places like these would have lots of vegans and animal rights people, and it’s true that college students are a rapidly growing segment of the vegan population. But this is not true of all universities, or of all programs within those universities, and, sadly, dedicated support for animal rights is still an outsider view within academia.When I was a graduate student in New York City, I felt pretty alienated because of my veganism, and even more so because of my commitment to animal rights. I wasn’t flat-out disrespected — mostly — but I was considered odd and an outsider to the rather tight-knit community of grad students, who traditionally subsist on extra cheese pizza and cheap Chinese takeout. Even though it was well-known that I was vegan and a few of my peers were vegetarian — and I was a graduate assistant who helped to plan and execute my program’s conferences — every conference still lacked vegan options (besides the potato chips), yet loaded on the meaty sandwiches. I was even called out for being vegan in one of my classes, when a fellow student declared I had come to a certain interpretation of a medieval religious text only because I personally didn’t consider animals food (I’m serious).

Animals & Society Institute

Luckily, there are programs and academics who are trying to change this. The burgeoning field of animal studies attempts to render visible what centuries of scholarship has ignored or rendered invisible – the relationship between humans and other animals. The Animals & Society Institute, a fantastic resource for anyone interested in the academic study of animals, defines animal studies as “a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that examines the complex and multidimensional relationships between humans and other animals.” Being interdisciplinary, the field includes approaches from such diverse areas as psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, law, history, literary criticism, and more.

The Animals & Society Institute maintains a useful list of universities and colleges that have animal studies programs, so it would be redundant to list them all here. But there are a few standouts you should keep your eye on:

• As we’ve reported on before, Connecticut’s Wesleyan University recently started offering an animal studies program. It’s also becoming a great center for animal studies, hosting this year’s “Sex, Gender, Species” conference and acting as the home of the Animals & Society Institute’s summer fellowship program.
• Thanks to Brad Goldberg of the Animal Welfare Trust, New York University recently launched an “Animal Studies Initiative,” establishing a minor in animal studies and creating new courses, conferences, and facilitating research in the field.
• Critical animal studies is an academic field of study for those explicitly committed to animal liberation. Brock University in Ontario, Canada offers a minor and concentration in critical animal studies (and was the first university to do so). Amazingly, to maintain ethical consistency with their program, Brock’s entire sociology department is vegan.
• The Institute for Critical Animal Studies provides resources and opportunities for academics who are also activists fighting on behalf of animals, including a journal, book series, and conferences.

If there are other programs or courses in animal studies that you would like to highlight, please feel free to add them to the comments section below!

It’s never been a better time to be thinking about (and advocating for) animals in academia, but lots more work needs to be done (especially at my graduate school alma mater…). If you want to help establish an animal studies program at your school, check out the Animals & Society Institute’s tips and consider giving them your support. Also, remember to keep reading Our Hen House’s Class Act series for news and opportunities related to academic animal activism.