Schedule

Feb 22-24: Montana State University-Billings

FRIDAY EVENING, February 22, 2007

5:00 Registration

6:00 Music: Scott and Kris Prinzing, original acoustic music about non-human beings

6:45 Poetry: Tami Haaland

7:00 Steven Best, PhD and Carol Gigliotti, PhD: The Case for Critical Animal Studies

Critical assessment of animal studies in academia in contrast to a more critical animal studies that keeps the realities of animals and green practice at the forefront of concrete and engaged theory

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2007

6:30 Registration

7:00 Introductions and Announcements

7:05-8:05 LITERATURE, ENVIRONMENT, ANIMALS

Zach Duval (MSU-B student): Boundaries: Voices Between the Lines

Examination of boundaries between humans and non-human animals, and the implications of these boundaries, through literature, starting with Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony

Bernard Quetchenbach, PhD: Reality, Imagination, and the Animal We See

Metaphorical exploration, based on poetry and a personal essay, of “capturing” animals in various categories, a process which animals, ultimately and thankfully, elude

Melanie J. Martin: Why We Seek to Conquer Wild Animals: The Role of the Environment

Through literary accounts, an exploration of how nonhuman animals within the landscape, particularly when elusive or rare, signify a challenge to Western imperialistic tendencies toward nature

8:15-9:20 SEAS and SEA-LIFE / MINDS AND VOICES

Amelia McDanel: Ocean Transport, Pollution, and Ocean Life

Cruises, naval operations, and big industry—how does our use of the oceans for transport, entertainment, and defense affect the seas and sea life?

Bethany Dopp, MSU-B student: A Fishy Business

Exploration of human impact on oceans, including loss of individual life and destruction of ecosystems

Kristen Prinzing: Human Language and Non-Human Beings: Articulation, Perception and Reality

Exploration of interconnections between human communication and our attitudes and behaviors towards the rest of life

Gordon Brittan, PhD: “Reading” Other Animals and the Worlds in Which They Live

As the minds of other animals can be understood insofar as their behavior is "read," so a similar "reading" of the environment is necessary to defend nature.

9:30-10:15 POLICY ISSUES

Priscilla Paton, PhD: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Deer

Explores conflict over deer population control, emphasizing immuno-contraception

Anja Heister (Executive Director of Footloose Montana): Trapping, the Environment, and Animals

Explores current trapping practices in Montana, and ethical and scientific issues related to commercial and recreational trapping of wild animals

Jennifer Dillard, J.D. candidate (Roundtable option): The Imminent Outsourcing of Cruelty and Pollution: International Implications of Localized Welfare Reforms

Explores unintended results of welfare reforms in the U.S focusing on "outsourcing" cruelty to nations with lower levels of animal protection

10:20-11:30 PHILOSOHPICAL LINKS AND DISPUTES

Randall Gloege: Individual vs Species: Which should we save?

Wilderness and animal-rights advocates in fact and potentially have much to share in common, including respect, compassion, and love for the live things of planet earth

Michael Becker, PhD: Raising Consciousness in the Moral Community

Ontological nihilism, being conceived as use, buttresses animal degradation. Rights philosophy conceals such nihilism. Solidary engagement is resistance with (not for) animals, marking authentic liberation.

Georgina Montgomery, PhD: Looking at Duck Rape through the Eyes of “isms”: Feminism, Speciesism and Anthropomorphism

Through the case study of duck rape, explores what connections exist between feminism and animal studies within academia and activism

TR Kover (graduate student, Leuven, Belgium): The Biodiversity Crisis as Existential Crisis: Paul Shepard and the Human Need for Wild Otherness

Paul Shepard contends that our biodiversity crisis is the result of a change in the way humanity conceives of itself and its relationship with the non-human natural world

11:30 LUNCH (Ballroom)

12:45-1:45 KAREN DAVIS, PhD: The Place of Farmed Animals in the Environmental Debate

Compares anonymity of farmed animals in environmental discourse with their anonymity in industry, and why thinking like a chicken is as requisite as thinking like a mountain in our relations with the world around us.

2:00-3:15 RETHINKING EDUCATION

Carol Gigliotti, PhD: Code ? Informatics ? Animals

What role does the animal play in biotech and nanotech scenarios of art and science informatics? And what do those roles mean for animals themselves?

Anthony J. Nocella, II (Graduate Student, Syracuse University): Disability Studies - The Philosophy of Nature

Critiques normalcy, a social construction, and domestication. Normalcy reinforces domestication by proclaiming that normal is domestic and abnormal is wild, which is central to this socially constructed binary.

Richard Kahn, PhD: Not Environmental Education, But Eco-pedagogy: The State of the Discourse

Critique of current trends in environmental education theory and policy, uncovering the need to militate for radical ecopedagogy.

Julie Andrzejewski, EdD: Advancing Animal Advocacy in Education

Strategies for moving animal advocacy into education at all levels by linking global non-hegemonic, social justice, peace, environmental and interspecies issues.

3:20-4:20 STEVE BEST, PhD: AETA, the SHAC7, and the “War on Terror”

Focus on the economic and political context of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), the SHAC7 trial, and how the government’s “war on terror” is a front for a new war on democracy

4:20 closing remarks and announcements

4:30-5:30 Round Table discussions

* AETA and policy issues (Stay in Lewis and Clark room)
* Farmed Animals and Sea Life (go to Missouri Room)
* Education and Philosophical Issues (go to Beartooth Lounge)

5:30 DINNER (Ballroom) …continued roundtables…

7:00-9:30 ENTERTAINMENT

Featuring Bob Landis, Wolves: A Legend Returns to Yellowstone

SUNDAY

6:00-9pm Trip to Yellowstone Park, includes lunch