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  • From: "Del Williams" <delannw@dlogue.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: In reference to Permaculture and Vegans
  • Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:35:24 -0600


I received this announcement and thought it might be of interest to those
who have participated in the vegan discussion on the permaculture list.

--- Animal Defense League Chicago
ADLChicago@yahoo.com> wrote:
To: ADLChicago-announce@yahoogroups.com
From: Animal Defense League Chicago
ADLChicago@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 12:44:56 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [ADLChicago-announce] Animal Conference 4/27-4/28

This looks to be an EXCELLENT conference that anyone interested in human and
non-human animal consciousness should make every effort to attend.

MINDING THE BORDERS

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Animal Consciousness and the Human-Animal
Distinction

April 27-28, 2001
DePaul University
Schmitt Academic Building
2320 N. Kenmore Ave.
Chicago, IL USA

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
This interdisciplinary conference free and open to the public will focus on
the topics of animal consciousness (i.e., animal minds, animal epistemology,
animal knowledge) and the presumed boundary/distinction between human beings
and nonhuman
animals. By challenging the sharp line that separates humanity from the
rest of the
animal world¯especially as that line is thought to be constituted by our
differing mental abilities the
conference is essentiallyabout crossing borders.

Investigating the philosophic and scientific basis for such a distinction
as well as the cultural manifestations of the human-animal divide,
conference speakers and attendees will strive to answer the intricate
metaphysical (i.e., questions of what it is to be an animal),
epistemological (i.e., how do animals know things and
how can we know what they know), and ultimately ethical questions raised by
our vision of animal life and how we see ourselves fitting into the schema
that results from this vision.

Consequently, the conference will attempt to address but not be limited to
the following issues: the history of the idea of humans being separate from
animals; the reasoning and
methods by which we raw the line between "us" and "them"; the cultural
mechanisms we employ to set
the borders (including the depiction of animals in film, literature, other
forms of art, and popular culture); the concept of species and its
scientific validity and controversy; various particular aspects of animal
behavior that give insight into animal cognition (such as the language
skills of apes); the philosophical problem of access to animal minds
(including the way in which animals are thought to be separate from humans
because they are, in fact, typically judged to be "mindless" as in the
Cartesian view of animals as machines); the possibility of animal emotions
and the affective life of the mind; and the
cultural signposts marking the dangers of crossing the human-animal divide
(this is the realm of the
monster the Bigfoot, vampires, werewolves and other beasts that patrol the
borders that keep us
comfortably secluded and safe from The Animal).

WHERE AND WHEN
The conference will take place Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28, 2001
at DePaul University in the Schmitt Academic Center (the SAC building is
located at 2320 North Kenmore Avenue [between Fullerton Avenue and Belden
Avenue] in the Lincoln Park district of Chicago). On Friday evening (the
27th) we will be in SAC Room 154. On Saturday the 28th we will meet in SAC
Room 161.

Fullerton Avenue is easily accessible by car from I-90/94 on the west side
of Chicago and Lakeshore Drive on the east side. Take Fullerton east from
I-90/94; take Fullerton west from Lakeshore Drive. If using the EL subway
system, take the Brown, Red, or Purple line and stop at the Fullerton Exit
(also marked as the DePaul exit). Upon exiting the EL station, walk west on
Fullerton Ave. for two blocks to Kenmore Ave. Turn left (south) on Kenmore
and enter the SAC building through the library entrance. (Follow the signs!)

SCHEDULE

Friday April 27, 2001, SAC Room 154
6:00pm-9:00pm:
Inaugural poem, written by Vicki Hearne "Trained Man and Dog"

Video of performance artist Rachel Rosenthal, "Zato"

Rachel Rosenthal "Who? Animals?"

Marc Bekoff "The Rich Cognitive and Deep Emotional Lives of Nonhuman Animal
Beings: Blurring the Borders and Strolling with Our Kin"

Saturday April 28, 2001, SAC Room 161
9:00am-1:00pm:
Akira Mizuta Lippit "The Death of the Animal: At 24/25 Frames Per Second"

Margot Norris "Kafka's Hybrids: Thinking Animals and Mirrored Humans"

Bonnie Jo Campbell "Gorilla Girl"

H. Peter Steeves "Illicit Crossings: The Other at the Human/Animal
Boundary"

3:00pm-7:00pm

Alphonso Lingis "The Animal as Ethologist: Nonhuman Access to Human Minds"

Dorion Sagan "What Is an Animal?"

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh "Dialogues with Apes"

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson "Farm Animal Feelings and the Science of Animal
Behavior"

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS-PARTICIPANTS

Vicki Hearne
Hearne is a well-known animal trainer and the best-selling author of a
novel, multiple volumes of poetry, Bandit, Adam's Task, and Animal
Happiness. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award for outstanding
literary
achievement.

Rachel Rosenthal
Rosenthal has been performing since she was three. In the last twenty-six
years she has presented over thirty-five full-scale pieces nationally and
internationally. She is the recipient of N.E.A., Getty, Rockefeller, and
California Arts Council Fellowships as well as numerous awards including the
Village Voice OBIE Award (1989), the College Art Association Art Award
(1990), and the Women's Caucus for the Arts Honor Award for Outstanding
Achievement in the Arts (1994) among others. In 1994 she was chosen by
Robert Rauschenberg to represent Theatre in his suite of prints TRIBUTE 21,
and in 1995 she received the Genesis Award for spotlighting animal rights
issues in her work. Rosenthal performed in the 1987 and 1990 LA Festivals,
and presented her 56-performer piece ZONE for the 1993-94 UCLA Center for
the Arts Season. In 1995, with her newly formed Company, she revived her
acclaimed Instant Theatre of the 501s & 601s as TOHUBOHU! which ran from
1995 through 1997. Since that time, with her company she has collaboratively
created DBDBDB-d: An Evening, Timepiece, The Unexpurgated Virgin, and Muck.
She has toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia.
Rosenthal has taught classes and workshops in performance since 1979, in her
LA studio as well as around North America and Europe. And in 2000, she was
named "Living Cultural Treasure" by the City of Los Angeles. Selected
published texts include: "The Others" in Performance Research Journal, Vol.
5 #2 Summer 2000, Cardiff Wales "Zone," TDR # 169, 2001 "Rachel's Brain &
Other Storms,"Continuum 2001, London (13 texts) "Pangaean Dreams," Plays
for the End of the Century, Johns Hopkins U Press, 1996 Rachel Rosenthal,
Johns Hopkins U Press, 1997 Tatti Wattles, A Love Story, Smart Art Press,
1996 "Animal/Human Hybrid Images in the Western World," American Writing
Vol.10, 1994-95.

A video series and companion book on her teaching methods are currently in
the works. In 1997, Rosenthal was granted a career achievement award for
her contribution to theater in LA by the LA WEEKLY. In 1999 she received
the Honorary Doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago. She recently
retired from the world of Performance Art after touring her final work
UR-BOOR in 2000. Most recently, Rosenthal received the Association of
Performing Arts Presenters Award of Merit for 2001. In general,
Rosenthal's work continues to center around the issue of humanity's place on
the planet. She is an
animal rights activist, a vegetarian, and companion to two cats and two
dogs.

Marc Bekoff
Bekoff is Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and
is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a former Guggenheim Fellow.
He recently was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society
for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior. Bekoff
is also regional coordinator for Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots program. He
and Jane have recently co-founded the organization Ethologists for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior
Studies (www.ethologicalethics.org). He also is on the Advisory Board for
the conservation organization, SINAPU, and is part of the international
program, Science and the Spiritual Quest II (www.ssq.net).

Bekoff's main areas of research include animal behavior, cognitive ethology
(the study of animal minds), and behavioral ecology; and he has also
published extensively on animal issues. He has published over 150 papers
and 13 books, the latest being Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology
of Cognitive Ethology (with Colin Allen, MIT Press, 1997); Nature's
Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology (edited with Colin
Allen and George Lauder, MIT Press, 1998); Animal Play: volutionary,
Comparative, and Ecological Approaches (edited with John Byers, Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare
(Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998); and a book on the lighter side, Nature's
Life Lessons: Everyday Truths from Nature (with Jim Carrier, Fulcrum, 1996).
His children's book, Strolling with Our Kin (Foreword by Jane Goodall), was
published in fall 2000 (Lantern Books) as was The Smile of a Dolphin:
Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions (Random House/Discovery Books; cover
story in U.S. News and World Report and USA Today). The Cognitive Animal
(edited by Bekoff, Colin Allen, and Gordon Burghardt) will appear in 2002.
Bekoff's work has been featured on 48 Hours, in Time Magazine, Life
Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, The New
York Times, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, Scientific American, on NPR,
BBC,Natur GEO, in a National Geographic Society television special ("Play:
The Nature of the Game"), and in Discovery TV's "Why Dogs Smile and
Chimpanzees Cry."


Akira Mizuta Lippit
Lippit is Associate Professor of Film and Visual Studies at the University
of California, Irvine. He is the author of Electric Animal: Toward a
Rhetoric of Wildlife (2000). Lippit's work has appeared in 1895,
afterimage, Assemblage,Camerawork, Criticism, ICC, MLN, Poliphile, Public,
Qui Parle, and Women and Performance. At present, he is completing a thesis
on catastrophic light, which looks at the effects of atomic and x-ray
radiation on photography and film. The manuscript is tentatively titled,
phenomenologies of the Surface.

Margot Norris
Norris is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University
of California, Irvine. She is a well-known scholar on the area of James
Joyce, and is the author of Beasts of the Modern Imagination: Darwin,
Nietzsche, Kafka, Ernst, and Lawrence (Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985); Writing War in the Twentieth Century (University Press of Virginia,
2000); The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake: a Structuralist Analysis
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Joyce's Web: The Social Unraveling
of Modernism (University of Texas Press, 1992); and she is the editor of the
Bedford Critical Companion to Joyce's Ulysses (1998).

Bonnie Jo Campbell
Campbell is the author of Women & Other Animals, winner of the AWP award for
short fiction. She is the co-editor of Working Lives: Short Stories of
People and Work. She has an MFA in creative writing from Western Michigan
University, as well as an A.B. in philosophy from University of Chicago and
an M.A. in mathematics. In the recent past,Campbell has been a visiting
professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Currently, she is
working on a novel for Scribner's
entitled The Barn. Although Campbell has traveled with a circus, she
currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

H. Peter Steeves
Steeves received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Indiana University. He is
currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, where he
specializes in phenomenology, applied ethics (especially animal rights,
environmental ethics, and bioethics), and social-political philosophy. He
is the editor of Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life (SUNY
Press, 1999), which addresses questions of animal rights and animal being
from the perspective of continental philosophy. He is also the author of
Founding Community: A Phenomenological-Ethical Inquiry (Kluwer, 1998); "Deep
Community: Phenomenology's Disclosure of the Common Good," in Between the
Species 10, number 3-4 (summer/fall 1994) 98-105; "The Boundaries of the
Phenomenological Community: Non-Human Life and the Extent of our Moral
Enmeshment," in Becoming Persons, edited by Robert N. Fisher (Oxford,
England: Applied Theology Press, 1995) 777-797; and "The Familiar Other and
the Feral Self," in Identity and Alterity: Essays on the Human/Animal
Boundary (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2001).


Alphonso Lingis
Lingis is Professor of Philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University. He
is the author of Excesses: Eros and Culture (1984), Libido: The French
Existential Theories (1985), Phenomenological Explanations (1986),
Deathbound Subjectivity (1989), The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in
Common (1994), Abuses (1994), Foreign Bodies (1994), Sensation:
Intelligibility in Sensibility (1995), The Imperative (1998), and Dangerous
Emotions (2000).


Dorion Sagan
Recipient of the EdPress Association of America Excellence in Educational
Journalism Award for an article on the origin of sex, Sagan has written on
topics relating to the nature of animality in a range of works including
Origins of Sex (Yale University Press); Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia,
Evolution, and Symbiosis (Copernicus Books); What is Sex? (Simon &
Schuster); What is Life?; ("A masterpiece of science writing," Mitchell
Tomashaw, Orion); Microcosmos ("A seminal book," Ben Bova; "One of the
most important books in the history of humanity," Amazon.com); Mystery Dance
(exclusive selection, Quality Paperback Bookclub); Garden of Microbial
Delights (Kendall-Hunt); and Biospheres: the Metamorphosis of Planet Earth
(McGraw-Hill/Penguin Books). His current projects include Into the Cool
(Tusquets, Spain), a work with Montana ecologist Eric D. Schneider which
brings¯after heliocentrism, evolutionary connection (to eukaryotic microbes
unto primates etc.), and the realization that we are made of cosmically
abundant atoms¯the next step in scientific deconstruction: open-system
thermodynamics, which provides a basis for animal intelligence. Sagan is
also working with British neurophysiologist John Skoyles on Up from Dragons,
an update on the last quarter century of brain science. He has also written
a comedy, Cooking with Jesus: From the Primal Brew to the Last Brunch,
available at cookingwithjesus.com.

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Savage-Rumbaugh received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1975
and is currently a Professor of Biology, Psychology, and Comparative Primate
Cognition at Georgia State University in Decatur, Georgia. Savage-Rumbaugh
studies communication among primates and runs a 55-acre laboratory, The
Language Research Center, near Atlanta where she trains animals and humans
to communicate with each other. She is the author of Kanzi: The Ape at the
Brink of the Human Mind (1994) and¯with Stuart G. Shanker and Talbot J.
Taylor is a co-author of Ape Language and the Human Mind The study of
comparative cognition focuses on the representational and symbolic
capacities of primates, which include skills necessary to symbolizing such
as sustaining voluntary attention, delayed responding, memory, visual
discrimination skills, categorization,speech comprehension, vocal
production, number concepts, maze and spatial organization skills, concept
formation, and tool manufacture. Several new technologies for working with
primates have been developed at the Language Research Center, including a
keyboard that provides for speech synthesis and allows the animals to
communicate using spoken English, and a computer-based joystick terminal
that is "primate friendly" and permits automated presentation of many
different computerized tasks.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Masson has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Harvard University (where he also did
his B.A.). He was
Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto from1970-1978. During
that time he took clinical
training as a psychoanalyst, and was graduated in 1978 as an analyst. He
then went to Berkeley as
visiting Professor of Sanskrit. The next year he spent in Germany, and in
1980 became Project Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. He published a
series of books about psychoanalysis and the history of psychiatry,
including The Assault on Truth, A Dark Science, The Complete Letters of
Freud to Fliess, Against Therapy, Final Analysis, and then switched his
interests to animals. Masson
has written When Elephants Weep, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and The
Emperor's Embrace, and is now working on a book about the emotional lives of
farm animals. He has also signed a contract to write about the feelings of
cats, and is working on a book about psychiatry and the holocaust. Masson
currently lives in New Zealand, on a beach just outside of Auckland.

WHERE TO STAY
There is no official hotel for the conference since all of the events will
take place on the Lincoln Park campus of DePaul University. However, the
following arrangements have been made to set aside some rooms at a
conference rate. Please note that the number of rooms is very limited and
all reservations must be made before March 27. After this date, the
conference rate cannot be guaranteed. As DePaul University is easily
accessible by car, taxi, or EL, any number of downtown (Loop) hotels in
Chicago would also be convenient. (The Lincoln Park campus of DePaul is,
on average, about a 15 minute EL ride or taxi ride[depending on traffic]
from the Loop.)

The Claridge Hotel (1244 N. Dearborn Parkway) in Lincoln Park has set aside
a small block of Queen
Superior rooms at the special rate of $120 ($20 per extra person) for April
26-28. Mention the "Minding the Borders" conference when making the
reservation. Call 1-800-245-1258 or 312-787-4980. See their
website at www.claridgehotel.com. To get to the Claridge from O'Hare
International Airport using public transportation (cost, $1.50), take the
Blue Line EL train from O'Hare to the city (you will be traveling south for
about 45 minutes). Get off at the Washington Exit and transfer to a Red
Line train going north (this is a free transfer). Take the Red Line train
north three stops to the Clark & Division Exit. At the
Clark & Division Exit, take the east stairs up to street level. Walk one
block east on Division to Dearborn. Walk one-half block north on Division
to the Claridge Hotel. (The hotel is just a short 2-3 minute walk from the
Clark & Division EL stop.)

The Congress Plaza Hotel (520 South Michigan Ave.) is downtown toward the
south end of the Loop, and they have set aside a larger block of rooms for
the conference at a rate of $139 for a single and $159 for a double. Again,
mention the "Minding the Borders" conference name to get the special rate.
Call 312-427-3800 or 1-800-635-1666 (or see their website at
www.congressplazahotel.com). To get to
the Congress Plaza Hotel by EL, get off at the Jackson stop on the Red Line
or the Blue Line. You
will be on State Street. Walk two blocks south to Congress Parkway (also
known as 290 [the Eisenhower Expressway]), then two blocks east (to your
left) to Michigan Ave. and the hotel. (The walk from the EL stop to the
hotel is about 5 minutes.)

Both hotels provide easy access by EL to theconference. Just jump on the
Red Line train at the nearby station and go north to the Fullerton (DePaul)
Exit. (This is about a 4 minute train ride from Clark & Division; about a 17
minute train ride from Jackson.)

CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY
DePaul University: Office of the Dean of The College of Liberal Arts
andSciences;
University Research Council; Department of Philosophy; The Environmental
Science Program; The
Humanities Center; Department of English; Department of History; and The
Honors Program.

FURTHER QUESTIONS? CONTACT

H. Peter Steeves
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
DePaul University
2219 N. Kenmore Ave.
Byrne Hall, 4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60614 USA
phone: 773-325-1153
e-mail: mindingtheborders@hotmail.com

The Animal Defense League (ADL) is an internationally active grassroots
organization working to inform the public about animal exploitation and
abuse. Through community outreach, networking, public education, vocal
demonstrations and civil disobedience, we speak for those who cannot speak
for themselves.

ADL Chicago | P.O. Box 10022 | Chicago, IL 60610 |
Hotline: 847-297-3596 Mailbox #6 |
ADLChicago@yahoo.com | www.adl-online.com

To subscribe to the ADL Chicago announcement email
list, please send a blank email to:
ADLChicago-announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Visit VEG on the web:
http://www.sa.niu.edu/veg/home.htm







  • In reference to Permaculture and Vegans, Del Williams, 03/20/2001

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