BOONE—Laura Wright, author of “The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror” will speak March 24 at 7 p.m. in room 114 Belk Library and Information Commons at Appalachian State University. Her talk is titled “Imagining Vegan Studies: English, Activism, and Animals.”

Wright is a professor and head of the English department at Western Carolina University, where she specializes in postcolonial literatures and theory, ecocriticism and animal studies. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Appalachian in 1992.

Her monographs include “Writing Out of All the Camps: J. M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement” and “Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment.” She is lead editor, with Jane Poyner and Elleke Boehmer, of “Approaches to Teaching Coetzee’s Disgrace and Other Works.” Her most recent monograph, “The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror” was published by the University of Georgia Press in October of 2015.

Published in 2015 by the University of Georgia Press, “The Vegan Studies Project” has been called “the foundational text for the nascent field of vegan studies.”

Author Hal Herzag wrote, “Combining personal narratives and gender studies with ecofeminism and pop culture, ‘The Vegan Studies Project’ offers a brilliant analysis of the impact of vegans and veganism on America’s cultural landscape. Laura Wright’s argument for a new field of vegan studies rings true, and this book will be the foundational text.”

According to the University of Georgia Press, Wright says that “the vegan body threatens the status quo in terms of what we eat, wear, and purchase—and also in how vegans choose not to participate in many aspects of the mechanisms undergirding mainstream culture. These threats are acutely felt in light of post-9/11 anxieties over American strength and virility. A discourse has emerged that seeks, among other things, to bully veganism out of existence as it is poised to alter the dominant cultural mindset or, conversely, to constitute the vegan body as an idealized paragon of health, beauty, and strength. What better serves veganism is exemplified by Wright’s study: openness, debate, inquiry, and analysis.”

Copies of Wright’s book will be available for sale and signing.

About Appalachian State University

As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, cost-effective education. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.

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