• Date: June 20-22, 2013
• Site: Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC)
• Host: MCTC Philosophy Club (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

Breaking the Silence on Global and Local Intersections of Ethnicity, Spirituality, and Nonhuman Animal

Description
As the poor become poorer, more prisons are constructed, and the global south struggles with exploitation, disease, hunger, and mass displacement, social justice activists are becoming more intolerant of global racism and discrimination. In kind, the theme of this year’s annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies is the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, animals, and spirituality. Some of the foundational questions that the conference is interested in discussing include: Can activists compare struggles of racism to nonhuman animal suffering? What is the intersectional history of ethnicity and animals? Do you have to be anti-racist to be an animal advocate? How has religion aided in the marginalization of people of color and nonhuman animals? How has religion aided in the liberation of people of color and nonhuman animals? How, if at all, do animal advocates challenge colonization, imperialism, and racism? What are the theoretical and scientific similarities between racism and speciesism? How have different ethnic and spiritual groups addressed animal advocacy?

We welcome proposals from community members including nonprofit organizations, political leaders, activists, and professors, staff, and students from within higher education. We are especially interested in the histories of social movements, spirituality, global religions, race, ethnicity, decolonization, critical race theory, nonviolence, alliance politics, freedom, democracy, total inclusion, global trade, globalization, whiteness, radical feminism, anti-racism, imperialism, prison abolition, labor rights, disability rights, legal issues, and indigenous rights/sovereignty.

Format
Presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes long. We are receptive to innovative formats including roundtables, panels, community dialogues, theater, and workshops. You may propose individual or group “panel” presentations, but please clearly specify the structure of your proposal and stress in your paper/roundtable/panel/etc. proposal how you will be focusing on the program theme and linking it to ethnicity, spirituality and critical animal studies.

Submissions

• Proposals or abstracts for panels, roundtables, workshops, or paper presentations should be no more than 500 words.
• Please send a 100-word (maximum) biography for each facilitator or presenter—speaking to your activism and scholarship—in third person paragraph form.
• The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2013.  Accepted presenters will be notified via e-mail by April 15, 2013.
• Please send proposals/abstracts and biographies electronically using an MS Word attachment in Times Roman 12 point font to: icasnorthamerica@gmail.com.  Write in the Subject line: “Conference Proposal”