Almost everything that one needs to know about animals and their place in the world will be the topic of a week-long conference, “Minding Animals”, at Jawaharlal Nehru University from Wednesday.
The conference, organised and hosted jointly by the University and the Wildlife Trust of India, has lined up nearly 200 speakers from across the globe. This is the third time such conference being held in the world and the first time in India.
This year, experts from nearly 30 countries will participate in the event. The speakers will share their insights on animal welfare in the context of culture, humanities, art, literature, feminist studies, films, music, performance, confinement citing references from across the world.
Everything from rats to elephants; chimpanzees to Eastern blue-tongued lizards; animal welfare to de-colonization and inter-sectionality between animals and religion; feminism and sex work to queer normality and animal sterility; the politics of primates in South Africa to the use of animals in Norwegian political party programmes; animal slaughter in the name of God, gendered representation of sheep in modern Japanese literature to animals in folk myths and a history of music for non-human listeners and its political implications; the animal attendants of Siva and Parvati to Beyond GDP: true wellbeing for animals and people are some of the topics that will be discussed during the conference.
Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar will be the chief guest, while Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi will give the keynote speech.
“Animals have always shared historical and contemporary lives of Indians. The deep intellectual engagement with the animal world is a reflection of this close relationship. I am glad that a conference dedicated to the life and world of animals and animal-human relationships is being organised in Delhi,” added JNU Vice-Chancellor S.K Sopory.
Speakers at “Minding Animals” will share their insights on animal welfare in the context of culture, humanities, art, literature, feminist studies, films, music, performance and confinement
