Call for papers

Submission deadline: February 1st, 2026.

The Canadian Society for Critical Animal Studies (CSCAS) is launching a call for proposals for its upcoming annual conference. This year, the conference will focus on a fascinating but little-explored theme: animals considered wild, stray, feral, liminal, or simply… free to roam in our predominantly human spaces. This conference invites us to think differently about these animals from the perspective of critical animal studies. Contributions from all academic disciplines, activist circles, and the art world are welcome.

Summary

Animal control officers routinely refer to feral, stray, lost or simply wandering companion animals, as well as urban wildlife, as “at large,” oddly implying that animals are criminal, dangerous, and in need of capture, simply for being free in humanized spaces, however temporarily and whether or not voluntarily. For the 2026 meeting of C-CAS, we welcome abstracts for presentations that consider feral, stray, free-living, liminal, and wild animals from critical animal studies perspectives.

Possible topics include:

• wild animal ethics: are we ethically obligated to intervene in the suffering of free-living animals?
• wild animals in captivity: wildlife rehabilitation centers, the wildlife trade
• wild animals in the Anthropocene: endangerment, extinction, resilience and adaptation
• urban wildlife
• co-existing with predators
• feral cat colonies and the “cat wars”
• animal control and the criminalization of “pest,” feral, and stray animals
• escaped farmed animals
• animal resistance and revolt
• “liminal animals” and “wild animals” in political theory
• ethnographies, autoethnographies, and memoirs of wild, stray, feral, liminal, or free-living animals
• language: how should we refer to non-domesticated animals who are not living under direct human control? Is “wild” stigmatizing? Is “free-living” idealizing?
• reclamations of the wild, stray, and feral from stigma

Submission guidelines:

Please send a 500-word abstract and a 150-word biography by February 1, 2026, to : canadiansocietyforcas@gmail.com. The CSCAS accepts proposals for individual presentations or full panels. It also accepts proposals for creative presentations and workshops led by activists.

The conference will take place on August 6 and 7, 2026, in Montreal. For more information, click here.