Gender, Animals, and Veganism
Gender, Animals, and Veganism
Course materials available on Monday, Sept 15, 2025 + 4 Live Zoom Q&A sessions Sept 19, 26, Oct 3, and 10 at 9 a.m. PDT.Course 1021
In the West, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, veganism continues to be viewed as the purview of a white, upper-middle class left-leaning subculture. It is often depicted as an elitist endeavor. It is gendered as a female undertaking and, therefore, often dismissed as naively emotionally motivated—or characterized as disordered consumption.
In this course, we will examine the role that gender plays in vegan identity and the ways that vegan studies offers a lens through which to read and understand a variety of texts —both fictional and nonfictional—that engage with the oppression of animals and of humans. In all of the texts we will discuss, the female protagonists’ veganism renders them vulnerable to interpretations not of their own making, a striking pattern that we will analyze in detail.
Course Details
• Live Online and Self-Study.• 4 hours of recorded video content.
• Weekly readings for self-study.
• Course begins Monday, September 15, 2025.
• 4 Live Zoom Q&A sessions on Fridays: Sept 19 & 26, Oct 3 & 10 at 9-10 a.m. PDT.
Learning Area
Animal Advocacy & Biodiversity 
Social Justice Instructor
Laura Wright
Laura Wright is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, where she specializes in postcolonial literatures and theory, ecocriticism, and animal studies. Her monographs include Writing Out of All the Camps: J. M. Coetzee's Narratives of Displacement (Routledge, 2006 and 2009) and Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment (U of Georgia P, 2010). She is lead editor (with Jane Poyner and Elleke Boehmer) of Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works (MLA, 2014). Her most recent monograph, The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror, was published by the U of Georgia P in 2015. Her edited collection Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism was published in February 2019 by the University of Nevada Press.
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