Editorial Team

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ISSN: 1948-352X

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Journal for Critical Animal Studies Editorial Team

Richard White
Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Richard J WhiteDr. Richard J White is Lecturer of Economic Geography at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. To date, Richard’s main area of research has focused on exploring the geographies of the informal economy in the Minority World/ advanced economies generally, and in particular through understanding community self-help, mutual aid and reciprocity. His research, focused on both affluent and deprived communities, has critically challenged many dominant myths that surround our understanding of contemporary work and exchange in “capitalist” society. In addition to disseminating his research through peer-reviewed journals, Richard has formally participated in conferences and seminars to International and European audiences (ranging from local policy making communities and think-tanks, to high-profile academics, and senior government officials). Richard’s broad teaching and lecturing profile includes: re-thinking the economic in economic geography; philosophical approaches to space and place; alter-globalization groups; the use of direct action within human and animal liberation movements; dissident and moral geographies; and critical pedagogy. Finally, Richard is also currently serving on the Editorial Boards of “The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy” and “Theory in Action, The Journal of the Transformative Studies Institute”.

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Lindgren Johnson
Associate Editor

Johnson1Lindgren Johnson earned her B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Mississippi. Her dissertation focuses on representations of animals and animality in nineteenth-century African American literature, examining shifts in approaches to animal ontologies and epistemologies within abolitionist rhetoric, slave narratives, postbellum dialect tales, and lynching and anti-lynching discourse. She is particularly interested in how these authors often problematize and challenge the very notion of humanity that had been proffered as their salvation in the search for justice. She is a contributor to Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (UPNE, 2008) and is a vehement vegan.

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Nicole Pallota
Associate Editor

Pallota1Nicole Pallota holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Georgia. Her areas of interest include social movements, culture, social psychology, critical theory, and postmodern theory. Her dissertation, “Becoming an Animal Rights Activist: An Exploration of Culture, Socialization, and Identity Transformation,” analyzed the biographical narratives of vegan animal protection activists, particularly the social context of developing a pro-animal consciousness within a dominant culture that harbors contradictory attitudes regarding nonhuman animals, but in which animal exploitation is normative. While in graduate school, Nicole developed and taught the first Animals and Society course at the University of Georgia. Nicole has served as a council member for the American Sociological Association’s Animals and Society Section, and her latest article, “Origin of Adult Animal Rights Lifestyle in Childhood Responsiveness to Animal Suffering,” was published in the journal Society and Animals in 2008. In addition to her academic work, Nicole has been involved with numerous animal protection and rescue groups over the years. Nicole’s current concerns include the social psychology of empathy, exploring and challenging the social construction of boundaries between human and nonhuman animals, the plight of farmed animals, companion animals with disabilities, and the possibility of creating trans-species relationships free from domination. Nicole lives in Portland, Ore., with her best friend Alec, a rescued German shepherd. She blogs at www.alec-story.blogspot.com.

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Veda Stram
Associate Editor

Stram1In the spring of 1988 when she was 42, Veda saw a brochure about animals abused in drug addiction experiments. She went to a Last Chance for Animals meeting that night and has been an activist ever since. She went vegetarian within days and was vegan within months. She volunteered with Last Chance for Animals, Orange County People for Animals, Northwest Animal Rights Network, managed www.AnimalsVoice.com, and was administrative editor of The Animals Voice Magazine. She coordinates Newcomer Orientations at FARM’s National Animal Rights Conferences to take care of people new to animal abuse issues and new to the possibilities of veganism. She wrote What to Eat When You Don’t Eat Animals: Menus to Inspire People Who Want to Live as if Life is Precious. She has been on the WorldFest LA committee for eight years. She has been working for All-Creatures.org since July 2008. She lives on Camano Island, Washington with four of the best roommates in the world, female felines Anya, Chloe, KayDee and Sams.

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Susan Thomas
Associate Editor

Susan Thomas is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, and Political Science, at Hollins University in Virginia (Ph.D., University of California, 1990).  In 1999, she produced and taught the first Animal Rights Movement course in the University’s history, which she continues to teach once a year.  In 2008, she added another new course, Gender and Animal Rights, to the curriculum.  She an also active in the local animal rights movement community and is a direct action vegan.  Professor Thomas’ academic interests include critical theories of race and subjectivity; the intersectionality of women’s rights and non-human animal rights; and the state’s active complicity in the abuses of marginalized women living in poverty. Her work concerns the hidden power behind ‘neutral’ rules, the role of male heterosexual privilege in the construction of hierarchal rules and law-making processes, and the invisibility of those subordinated by the public/private divide. While her research focuses on contemporary U.S. culture and politics and their relation to political and economic forces, she addresses, more broadly, questions of gender, race, species and sexual identity in discourses and material practices of anthropocentrism, heteroarchy, and patriarchal capitalism. She is currently researching the politics and policy of civil union and same sex marriage laws passed or under consideration in the United States.  Professor Thomas lives with her partner, Lori, and their daughter Cais Fu Feng, as well as her 10 feline and canine family members: DaXia, Little Bear, Hera, Pellet, Shai Ming, Ling Ling, Romeo, Kirby, Tasche, and Lucky Wind.

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Bianka Atlas
Assistant Editor

Atlas has a longstanding interest in human rights, social justice and environmentalism, and a passionate concern for the well-being of all living creatures. She earned her BA in Psychology, Linguistics and French and LLB (Hons) from the University of Auckland, and her MSc (Childhood Studies) from the University of Edinburgh.  For her Masters dissertation, Bianka undertook research with unaccompanied asylum seekers in Manchester and Newcastle, exploring their experiences as they moved from care to living independently in the community. As well as clerking for the Principal Family Court Judge, Bianka has experience in policy and research roles in government, including in the mental health rights and protection team at the Ministry of Health and as an advisor to the Children’s Commissioner.  She has worked in community law centres and as a Refugee and Individuals at Risk Intern at Amnesty International. Bianka currently serves on the Boards of two NGOs – SAFE (Save Animals from Exploitation), New Zealand’s foremost animal advocacy organisation and Global Focus Aotearoa, a specialist provider of information and education on global and development issues. Bianka lives in Aotearoa New Zealand, where she is known to share her love with neighbours’ dogs in the form of excursions to the beach or park.  Her family’s feline companion, Lea, turns 19 this month.

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Laura Shields
Assistant Editor and Interview/Dialogue Editor

Shields1Laura Shields earned a B.A. from Willamette University in History and Spanish and is currently a doctoral student in American Studies at Saint Louis University. Her academic interests include: human-nonhuman animal interactions in culture, gender and sexuality, environmental history and prison studies. She has presented at several conferences including the International “Gender, Animals and Society” conference at Uppsala University in Sweden. She holds a certificate in University Teaching Skills and teaches a Middle Eastern dance class to young women in a St. Louis detention center. Laura lives in St. Louis city with her feline friends, Emmett and Ota, and her human partner, Matt.

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Carol Glasser
Film Review Editor

Carol Glasser received her M.A., and is currently a doctoral candidate, in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her current research focuses on the animal rights movement, examining how social movement organizations and the state interact and the role of illegal direct action in the movement. She is also currently the Research Director at the Humane Research Council.  HRC focuses on conducting research to understand social attitudes toward issues relevant to animal advocates and to help animal advocacy groups learn about their target audiences, create effective messages and evaluate the success of campaigns and projects.

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Adam Weitzenfeld
Film Review Editor

Adam’s philosophical projects were born from the death of a cow. As he watched a documentary in which an unnamed cow, who in the process of being slaughtered, gazed at him through the television screen, he was forced to confront his own identity, privilege, and ignorance. Ashamed of his unwitting participation in this unnecessary and devastating system called “factory farming,” he dedicated himself to informing himself and others of the injustices people participate in everyday as well as exploring the philosophical discourse used to justify them. As an undergraduate student at Beloit College, he founded and directed an environmental club on campus (H.E.A.L.T.H.), held the position of food committee chair, interned at an animal protection organization, and did an independent study of Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry’s disturbance to Australian rainforests. After receiving a Service Honors Term Award in 2007, he developed and facilitated the Eco-Literacy Project, a ten-week place-based environmental education program for children in the community of Beloit, WI. In the summer of 2008, he interned at Farm Sanctuary, giving educational tours about CAFOs and the rescued residents. Since the fall of 2008, he has been maintaining a web resource and blog on the intersections of oppression in the production, distribution, and consumption of “food.” Presently, his research interests include critical animal studies, ecological feminism, food politics, environmental justice, social and political philosophy, ecological and agricultural ethics.

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Dr. Richard Twine
Book Review Editor

Twine1Richard Twine is the Principal Investigator on the ROAR project, part of the Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen) funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (2002-2012). ROAR stands for ‘Reconfigurations of Human/Nonhuman Animal Relations in Genomics and Beyond’. Prior to his  work on ROAR he was a member of the Bioethics Today project - an online bioethics resource where he wrote weekly commentaries, many related to animal ethics. In 1996 he formed the web-site www.ecofem.org the web’s longest running web-site on the philosophy of ecofeminism.

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Vasile Stanescu
Book Reviewer

Vasile is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in the program of Modern Thought and Literature. He has already finished one book length manuscript and is currently finishing a second for his dissertation. The first entitled “Dying from Improvement: Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the New Eugenics” traces the idea of “letting die” from Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben as a way to reveal the continuation of certain eugenical practices which continue after the end of the literal camps following World  War II, specifically in the postcolonial and global context. The second manuscript is tilted “Inhumanities: Critical Animal Studies, Biopolitics, and World Literature.” The essential argument is that the colonial and postcolonial space represents an area where the metaphor of the animal serves to disempower the colonized subject which serves to simultaneously disempower the colonized other, while providing new justifications for speciesism and continued anthropocentricism. This reality is demonstrated in the novels of world literature which reflect on the colonial and postcolonial condition and the image of the animal, such as the novels of J.M. Coetzee, Indra Sinha, and Bhanu Kapil, as well as in a variety of contemporary cultural examples such as Burger King’s recent advertising campaign “The Whopper Virgins,” as well as Michael Pollan’s text the Omnivores Dilemma. Vasile was nominated for the best graduate student paper at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference at Harvard, awarded “Best Graduate Paper” at the week long International Minding Animals Conference in Australia, serves  on the review board for the Journal of Critical Animal Studies, and just was named co-Senior Editor, along with Dr. Helena Pedersen of Malmo University, for the new Critical Animal book series by Rodopi Press.

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Nick Cooney
Book Reviewer

Nick Cooney is the founder and Director of The Humane League, a regional animal protection organization that advocates on behalf of farm, lab and companion animals. The Humane League’s educational outreach, campaigns, and rescue efforts seek to save the lives and reduce the suffering of as many animals as possible, and for that reason they focus primarily on farmed animal issues. Nick has written for publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer and Z Magazine, and his work for animals has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. Nick holds a degree in Non-Violence Studies from Hofstra University and formerly worked conducting nutrition education programs with at-risk inner city high school students, both as an AmeriCorps member and as an employee of the University of Pennsylvania’s Urban Nutrition Initiative. In addition to his work with the Humane League, Nick is also works with the Books Through Bars prisoner education program sending free reading material to inmates.

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Review Board