Western Carolina University associate professor Laura Wright presents material from her recently published book, The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror, and facilitates a discussion on our perceptions of veganism as an identity category and social practice.

Ranging widely across contemporary American society and culture, Wright's new book 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).

Laura Wright is head of the English Department at Western Carolina University. She is the author of Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment.