Conference explores humans, animals

For years Alyce Miller, an IU English professor, wanted to plan a national conference involving her own interest -- animals.\nAfter a year of planning, her goal became a reality as the first-ever Kindred Spirits conference, hosted at IU, began Thursday afternoon. \n"I imagined a conference that I would (want to) attend," Miller said.\nThe conference is held in the Indiana Memorial Union, where panels, guest speakers and events will continue throughout the weekend. The conference focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to dealing with the issues facing the current relationship between humans and animals. \n"It's a hot topic right now, for a lot of reasons," Miller said. "When you talk about animals, you are also talking about what it means to be human, what it means when you say humans are animals and what those divisions look like." \nThursday's opening panel discussed the relationship between religion and animals and what it means to advocate for animals' rights in terms of a person's faith and beliefs. \nThe panel consisted of experts from fields ranging from law and poetry to Christianity and American Indian traditions. Miller said the variety helped the interdisciplinary attempt to bring many fields together in one setting. Following the panel, University of California Santa Cruz professor Donna Haraway delivered one of the keynote addresses in which she spoke about the complex relationship between human and nonhuman animals. \nIvan Kreilkamp, an IU English associate professor, moderated the opening discussion and enjoyed the opportunity to be involved in the conference. \n"These are very hot-button topics and current issues that we're dealing with," Kreilkamp said. \nThroughout the weekend the conference will hit topics from all areas of expertise, including sessions titled "Species and Race," "The Sexual Politics of Meat" and "Economies and Geographies of Desire." Miller received more than 300 paper submissions regarding these topics, and she said people from all over the country requested to lead a session or panel in their area of interest. \nJerome Stueart, a lecturer at Texas Tech University, heard about Kindred Spirits online and was too late to submit the paper he wanted, but he came to Bloomington anyway for the weekend. Stueart engaged in the opening panel, bringing up different angles on the issues at hand and challenging some of the speakers. \n"I think we did a good job at (examining) the different facets of the issues," Stueart said. \nMiller attributes the national interest in the conference to the fact that the support in relationships with animals goes past an animal-rights activist and affects fields like law, religion, government, nature and education. \nConference participants have the opportunity all weekend to meet with presenters and actively participate and give their insights in the ongoing discussions. The conference runs through Saturday at the IMU and the sessions are free to anyone interested. A full itinerary can be found at www.indiana.edu/~kspirits/.