Agenda

Virtual lecture series organized and moderated by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (University of California, San Diego) and Federica Timeto (Ca’Foscari University, Venice), in collaboration with the Environmental Humanities Degree at Ca’ Foscari University. The lectures are free and open to all (upon registration, see below). 

Frantz Fanon observed that “the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms” and that colonizer and colonized are constructed as “different species” (The Wretched of the Earth). White supremacy and an always exclusionary “humanism” stand on one side, with racialized and sub-humanized “animals” on the other. As Syl Ko observes, “By human, everybody just means white” (Aphro-ism).
To engage with animals in colonial encounters is to approach what Claire Jean Kim calls a “dangerous crossing” (Dangerous Crossings). Kim advocates an ethics of mutual avowal, whereby we simultaneously see and respond to multiple forms of oppression. Mutual avowal means challenging both settler colonialism and apartheid as well as ever-present human-on-animal “warfare” (Dinesh Wadiwel, The War Against Animals).
Our lecture series encompasses interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives that engage Kim’s praxis of mutual avowal. Topics to be addressed include the complex and often contradictory relationship of veganism and animal liberation to colonialism; individuals and organizations that approach nonhuman animal liberation as a fundamental component of decolonization; and the decimating impact of occupation and habitat destruction on wild animals, companion animals, feral animals, and animals used for food and labor. 

The New Jewish Shepherd: The Great Battle of Pastorship in Area C of the Israeli-Occupied West Bank
Irus Braverman, The State University of New York
March 7 
6:00 p.m. CET
Registration 7/03

Milk and Honey: Technologies of Plenty in the Making of a Holy Land
Tamar Novick, Technical University of Munich
April 15  
5:30 p.m. CET (also in person at CFZ Zattere, Venice)
Registration 15/04

Animal Politics and The Rise of Vegan Nationalism in Israel: A Critical Examination of the “Animal Nationalism” Framework
Hiroshi Yasui, National Institutes for the Humanities and Doshisha University
April 24
1:00 a.m. CET 
Registration 24/04

Intersectionality in Conflict: Reflecting on the Affective Geographies, Politics and Practices of Shared Struggles Across Difference
Esther Tordjmann (Alloun), University of New South Wales
May 8
10:30 a.m. CET
Registration 8/05

Fighting for Animals in an Anti-Black World
Claire Jean Kim, University of California, Irvine
May 23
6:00 p.m. CET
​​Registration 23/05