Animals at Large: CAS Perspectives on Wild, Feral, and Free-Living Animals is co-organized by the Canadian Society for Critical Animal Studies, the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en éthique (CRÉ) and the Social Justice Centre at Concordia University, the Groupe de recherche en éthique animale et environnementale (GREEA) and the Observatoire québécois en droit animalier (OQDA) based at the Université de Sherbrooke.

This event is co-sponsored by the Groupe de recherche en éthique animale et environnementale (GREEA), the Observatoire québécois en droit animalier (OQDA) based at the Université de Sherbrooke, the Killam Research Fund, the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Alberta, and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts and Department of Criminology.

The conference will be hybrid, register here (free and open to all).

Schedule:

Wednesday, August 5th

2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. – Welcome and Opening Keynote (Cinema de Sève): Stephanie Rutherford (Trent University), “Canids and Canada: Wolves, Coyotes and Regimes of Violence and Belonging”, moderated by Christiane Bailey

4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. –Artist-Activist Plenary (Cinema de Sève): Shannon Johnstone (Meredith College), “Photography, Animals, and Activism: Centering Animals Through an Ethics of Sight”, moderated by Deborah Hardt (University of Wollongong in Dubai)

5:15 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. – Shannon Johnstone Photography Exhibit and Reception (SHIFT Centre)

Thursday, August 6th

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – Continental breakfast (SHIFT Centre)

9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. – Wild Animal Attacks (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Kelly Struthers Montford

• Emelia Quinn (University of Ottawa), “When Animals Attack: The Comedy and Camp of Wild Animal Revenge”
• Susmita Roy (University of Alberta) “Who Produces the ‘Tiger Widow’? Ecology, Patriarchy, and Systemic Marginalization”
• Ian Hanesworth (University of Utah), “Wolf Mothers & Man Things: Agency, Emotionality, and Personhood in Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Wife’s Story’”

10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. – Coffee/tea break

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Feral Intimacies: Care and Control in Interspecies Relations (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Emelia Quinn

• Misha Solomon (Concordia University), “Goon at Love Park”
• Ishaan Selby (Concordia University), “‘Big, Furry, Asymmetrical Balls’: Wildness, Feral Sex, and Ownership in Marian Engel’s Bear”
• Jesse Arsenault (Concordia University), “The Wildness of Interspecies Desire in South African Literature and Law”

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m. – Lunch (SHIFT Centre)

1:15 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. – Wild Politics (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Chloë Taylor

• Pablo Castello (University of Denver), “The Territorial Rights of Wild Animals: Justification”
• Esther Palm (Université de Montréal), “Travail Animal et critique du sauvage en théorie politique”
• Christiane Bailey (Concordia University), “Renouncing violence and doing politics with wild and liminal animals in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Animals and the Right to Politics”

2:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – Coffee/tea break (SHIFT Centre)

3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. – Vermin, Pests and Invasive Species (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Kelly Struthers Montford

• Emily Major (University of Canterbury), “The Boogeymen of Our Forests: Anti-Possum Rhetoric and the Construction of Fear in Dominant Conservation Messaging in New Zealand”
• Zoei Sutton (Flinders University) and Kate Hall, “Feral Catastrophe: Analyzing the Narrative Construction of Australian Cats”
• Lauren Corman (Brock University), “Criminal/Animal: Trump’s Criminalization of Immigrants and Vilification of Nonhuman Animals”

Friday, August 7th

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – Continental breakfast (SHIFT Centre)

9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. – Keynote (Cinéma de Sève): Catia Faria (Complutense University of Madrid), “Compassion by Design: Aligning AI with the Welfare of Wild Animals”, moderated by Chloë Taylor

10:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. – Coffee/tea break (SHIFT Centre)

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Media Analyses (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Parth Pant

• Mathieu Chaput (Université TÉLUQ) and Jacinthe Dupuis (Université de Montréal), “The Communicative Constitution of Liminal Animals in the ‘Deer Saga’”
• Briana Magnuson (Western University) and Tony Weis (Western University), “HPAI in the Wild: A Critical Analysis of Media Coverage of the Panzootic Crisis”
• Branislava Vičar (University of Maribor), “The Conservation Discourse of Native Animal Species as Nationalist Narrative: The Case of the Marble Trout”

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch (SHIFT Centre)

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. – Wild Horses (Cinéma de Sève), moderated by Tayler Zavitz

• Sabine Sassner (University of Texas at Dallas), “Movement vs. Behaviour: Visibility and Agency of Equines”
• Lucy Horswill (Falmouth University), “From ‘Semi-Wild’ to Surplus: Language and Disposal at British Drift Sales”
• Kelly Struthers Montford (Toronto Metropolitan University) and Chloë Taylor (University of Alberta), “Wild Mustang Prison Programs in the American Southwest”

2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. – Extended coffee/tea break (SHIFT Centre)

3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. – The Future of Wildness (Cinema de Sève), moderated by Kelly Struthers Montford

• Stephanie Eccles (Toronto Metropolitan University), “Farmed Animals in Extreme Weather Events: Disaster Response Pathways and Foreclosures of Wildness”
• Sal Renshaw (Nipissing University) “Saving By Any Other Name: Sanctuaries, Arks, and the Governance of Animal Lives in the Anthropocene”
• Agata Kowaleska (Jagiellonian University), “Feralizing: Reimagining Future Liberations in Europe”