May 6, 2013 | 2:30 to 6:00 PM | The Jordan Center's Diasporas Project
Co-sponsored with the NYU Food Studies Program, this session of the Jordan Center's Diasporas Project considers animals. We all knew that the world could be viewed in ideological terms, but animals? It seems that a Soviet zoo was not just any zoo but a socialist one (McDonald) and that pigs in East Germany could be viewed in class terms as well. And yet the speakers tell us that the environmental and humane catastrophes that are associated with these places also transcend place and are part of a global problem -- perceptions and treatments of animals in the one case, a full-scale pollution of land and sea in the other. A third speaker (Jamieson) is a leading authority on the ethics and law of animal studies and as a non-specialist will help us make comparative and theoretical sense of it.
The Diasporas Project
The Diasporas Project is a series organized by the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia in spring 2013. It is part of the Center’s inaugural year and we are grateful to the many units around NYU that have been offering help and guidance. Sessions are co-organized with Ireland House (31 January – 1 February), Kevorkian (14 – 15 March), and Hebrew and Judaic Studies (25 - 26 April).
The overarching purpose of the project is twofold: to consider the shared characteristics and shared assumptions that underpin the idea of a diaspora, and in the process erode our parochialisms; and to better grasp what is at stake and what is assumed when we cast movement as a diaspora rather than say an emigration, a migration, sex trafficking, slavery, or a flow of refugees. The project in no way aims to settle these questions one way or another; rather it aims to address them intelligently and forthrightly, as a guide to students and colleagues.
Speakers:
Tracy McDonald, McMaster University
Thomas Fleischman, NYU
Karl Appuhn, NYU - Discussant
Dale Jamieson, NYU - Discussant
