The vegan studies project : food, animals, and gender in the age of terror / Laura Wright.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wright, Laura, 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Veganism--Social aspects.

Veganism.

Vegetarianism--Social aspects.

Vegetarianism.

Food habits--Moral and ethical aspects.

Food habits.

Food habits--Social aspects.

Food habits in literature.

Social aspects.

Physical Description:

xvii, 205 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, [2015]

Summary:

This inescapably controversial study envisions, defines, and theorizes an area that Laura Wright calls vegan studies. Ranging widely across contemporary American society and culture, Wright unpacks the loaded category of vegan identity. She examines the mainstream discourse surrounding and connecting animal rights to (or omitting animal rights from) veganism. Her specific focus is on the construction and depiction of the vegan body-both male and female-as a contested site manifest in contemporary works of literature, popular cultural representations, advertising, and new media. At the same time, Wright looks at critical animal studies, human-animal studies, posthumanism, and ecofeminism as theoretical frameworks that inform vegan studies (even as they differ from it). The vegan body, says Wright, 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Tracing the Discourse of Veganism in Post-9/11 U.S. Culture 28

Chapter 2 Vegan Vampires: The Politics of Drinking Humans and Animals in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and True Blood 43

Chapter 3 Vegan Zombies of the Apocalypse: McCarthy's The Road and Atwood's The Year of the Flood 68

Chapter 4 Death by Veganism, Veganorexia, and Vegaphobia: Women, Choice, and the Politics of "Disordered" Eating 89

Chapter 5 Men, Meat, and Hegan Identity: Veganism and the Discourse of Masculinity 107

Chapter 6 The Celebrity Vegan Project: Pamela, Mac, Mike, Ellen, and Oprah 130.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780820348551

0820348554

9780820348568

0820348562

9788203485688

8203485685

OCLC:

904755823