Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Dr. Karen Kilcup Organizes LAC Professorship Series

Posted on 04/16/2015

Dr. Karen Kilcup has been honored as the 2014-2018 Linda Arnold Carlisle Distinguished Excellence Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. The Professorship Symposium “Eating Green: Food, Animals, and Environmental Equity” was held on April 2nd in the Faculty Center, and her professorship talk took place on April 8th.

The “Eating Green” symposium featured a panel who spoke on an array of food-related issues: food choice from a communal perspective, the university’s work to reduce food waste, food insecurity among refugees in Guilford county, environmental costs of factory farming, posthumanist ecofeminisms, and hunting as a practice of environmental conservation.

Dr. Kilcup’s subsequent talk, “‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’: Children, Animals, and Environmental Ethics in The Juvenile Miscellany and Beyond,” examined children’s literature from 1825-1835, particularly poetry from The Juvenile Miscellany, a progressive children’s publication of the period. Professor Kilcup highlighted how children’s literature at that time was not very different from adult literature (some at a 12th grade reading level!) and how it was subversive in its encouragement of questioning the status quo in terms of animal welfare and the subjecthood of the natural world. In her talk, she encouraged participants to identify the distinguishing characteristics of children’s literature and presented several examples that challenge those definitions. Students and faculty alike eagerly participated in discussion. Linda Arnold Carlisle, who established the professorship in 2002 was also in attendance.

A video of Dr. Kilcup’s talk is available here. A video of the panel will be available shortly.