Society, Politics, Animals & Materiality

Just this week McGill-Queens University Press released the brilliant book, Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin: Wolves and the Making of Canada, by Stephanie Rutherford (Associate Professor in the Trent School of the Environment). The book is a fascinating account of wolves’ changing positions within settler-colonial national imaginaries in Canada – it will be of great interest … More June 8 book launch! Stephanie Rutherford’s Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin

We’re excited to announce the continuation of last fall’s fantastic Critical Anthropocene Speaker Series: Global, Decolonial, Critical Race Approaches for a Multispecies World, a collaboration between SPAM, the Colonial, Racial, Indigenous Ecologies (CRIE) working group and the Critical Anthropocene Research Group (CARG) at Concordia. Please join us for a lecture in the series by Neel … More The Critical Anthropocene Speaker Series continues! Featuring Neel Ahuja, March 8

This fall SPAM is delighted to team up with the Colonial, Racial, Indigenous Ecologies (CRIE) working group and the Critical Anthropocene Research Group (CARG) at Concordia to host the Critical Anthropocene Speaker Series: Global, Decolonial, Critical Race Approaches for a Multispecies World. Speakers include Beck Pearse and Dinesh Wadiwel, who gave a fantastic talk in … More SPAM’s full fall lecture series

Please join us over zoom on September 15 at 4pm pacific, 7pm eastern (Sep 16 at 9am in Australian eastern time) for SPAM’s first distinguished lecture of 2021. Beck Pearse and Dinesh Wadiwel will be speaking about “Multi-species production: Economic justice beyond the human,” over zoom (please email rcollard[at]sfu[dot]ca for the link.) Abstract: As we … More SPAM’s first distinguished lecture of 2021: Beck Pearse and Dinesh Wadiwel, Sep 15

After a bit of a hiatus, we are excited to announce the reanimation of SPAM, now cross-continental, run out of Concordia University and Simon Fraser University. We’re reviving SPAM’s distinguished lecture series remotely, so now you can tune in from the comfort of your living room couch, patio, or wherever the internet can be found. … More SPAM’s back!

We at SPAM are thrilled to announce that Professor Claire Jean Kim (Political Science and Asian American Studies, University of California Irvine) will be visiting Concordia on Nov 16 as this year’s Distinguished Visitor hosted by the SPAM Centre and co-sponsored by CISSC, the Department of English, and the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment. … More SPAM’s first Distinguished Visitor: Claire Jean Kim, Nov 16

Please join us for Christiane Bailey‘s talk, Animal Liberation Beyond Veganism: From Social Disobedience to Civil Disobedience, at 4pm on Oct 26 in room 1267 of the Hall Building. Christiane is a PhD Candidate studying animal philosophy at the Université de Montréal. Here is what Christiane will address in her talk, in her own words: “Are … More SPAM welcomes Christiane Bailey for a talk on Oct 26

Join us for the first SPAM event of the new academic year! On Monday October 2, one of SPAM’s founding members, PhD Candidate Constance Carrier-Lafontaine of Concordia’s Communications department, will present and discuss her current research. In her talk, “Multispecied lifecourses and the duelling temporalities of ‘bucket list’ adventures”, Constance will link her work on ageing … More First SPAM event of the fall!

We’re delighted to announce that the SPAM Centre will be an official 2017/18 working group of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC) at Concordia. It’s not just an honour for us to join a long list of exciting working groups past and present; there’s also some money involved! So we’ll be able … More Good news for SPAM!

On March 20, Sylvain Lavoie gave a fascinating presentation on the burgeoning practice of pet cremation. In his paper, “Rising from the Ashes [Like Humans]: Pet Cremation in Quebec,” Sylvain, a PhD Candidate in the PhD Humanities program at Concordia and a founding member of SPAM, situates pet cremation in a longer history of cremation and death rituals, revealing the political … More Sylvain Lavoie on pet cremation