In this presentation, Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau will discuss their recently released edited volume, Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (open access link). They will explore some of the central topics in the collection and highlight the serious issues that carceral strategies are posing in the animal protection movement. Gruen and Marceau will outline some of the significant dangers for both humans and animals that result from carceral thinking and the policies that spring from it. They argue that for animal protection to make genuine strides it must elevate and reframe human relationships with other animals, not villainize people who often have limited options.
Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. She is also a professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Science in Society, and coordinator of Wesleyan Animal Studies. She is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Entangled Empathy (2015), Critical Terms for Animal Studies (2018), animaladies (2018), Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (2011; second edition 2021), and Ethics of Captivity (2014). Her most recent books include Animal Crisis, co-authored with Alice Crary (2022) and Carceral Logics, edited with Justin Marceau (2022). Gruen is a Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics and the Inaugural Research Fellow for the Brooks Institute for Animal Law and Policy. She has been involved in animal issues for over 40 years, and she is also a leader in prison education and an archivist for chimpanzees in the US, given her work documenting the history of The First 100 chimpanzees in research in the US and the journey to sanctuary of the remaining chimpanzees in research labs, The Last 1000.
Justin Marceau is a Professor of Law, the Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar of Animal Law and Policy, the Faculty director of the Animal Law Program, and an affiliated faculty member with the Institute for Human Animal Connections at the Graduate School of Social Work. Professor Marceau continues to litigate pro bono cases and serve as a consultant or witness in a variety of criminal and civil cases. He serves as the reporter for the pattern criminal jury instruction committee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was also an inaugural member of the Governor’s Council for Animal Protection, and he serves as a member of an oversight committee for the Colorado Bureau of Animal Protection. He is on the advisory board for the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights, and is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Marceau is the author of Beyond Cages (Cambridge 2019) and the co-author of a forthcoming book with Alan Chen on Undercover Investigations (Cambridge 2023), as well as the co-editor with Lori Gruen of Carceral Logics.
NYU Animal Studies, active since 2010 and housed in the NYU Department of Environmental Studies, is a central gathering place for people who work on topics concerning nonhuman animals. Our students work with leading scholars in Animal Studies, Environmental Studies, and related fields; participate in intensive seminars, workshops, and conferences; and engage in a wide range of theoretical, practical, and creative pursuits upon graduation.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Thanks to the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy for their generous support of this lecture series.