Cows and Chicks: An Ecofeminist Pragmatist Perspective on Livestock

Friday, May 6
3:00-4:30 PM
Living Learning Center South Performance Hall

Every year during spring term, the Philosophy Department presents a large lecture especially for our undergraduate students. This year, Erin McKenna will give a talk titled “Cows and Chicks: An Ecofeminist Pragmatist Perspective on Livestock” on Friday, May 6, 3:00-4:30 PM in the Living Learning Center South Performance Hall (see details below). The time was chosen to minimize conflict with our regular classes and sections, and to engage students before leaving campus for the week end. This event will be announced in your undergraduate classes and sections, and you can expect relevant and engaging material that matters in your lives. If your instructor hasn’t mentioned it, please consider requesting extra credit for participation (perhaps based on a short written reflection).

This talk will examine some of the important connections among women, cows, and chickens. For much of humans’ agricultural history, milking cows and raising chickens was considered women’s work. Further, milk and eggs are the “products” of female animal beings. For some ecofeminists this creates a special connection and a special obligation not to partake of these agricultural products. Since the 1950s cows and chickens have been transformed into industrial animals and women have been replaced with automated industrial systems. There are many consequences of this change: cheaper milk, meat, and eggs; more concentrated waste products affecting the environment; less freedom for chickens and cows; and limited interactions between humans and the animal beings used in agricultural production. This distance has allowed for further objectification of the animal beings and increased consumption of them. In the case of cows and chickens, they are often presented as sexualized females, and human women are sexually objectified in advertisements promoting their consumption. An ecofeminist/pragmatist perspective will be used to examine the history and consequences of this intertwining of the lives and deaths of women, cows, and chickens, and to suggest some possible changes in the human relationship with cows and chickens that would increase the possibility of respecting their lives, as well as the lives of human women.

Poster for Undergraduate Lecture with Erin McKenna
Cows and Chicks Poster