Meat, Prey, Love: Human-Animal Relations in the time of COVID

Samantha King
Professor of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen's University 

The COVID crisis has highlighted the deep interconnectedness of human and animal worlds. From zoonotic transmission in factory farms and wild animal markets, to illness and death among meat packing workers, from “pandemic puppies,” to face masks for companion species, the virus and responses to it are indubitably more-than-human. Less obviously, perhaps, the virus is bound up with economic and racial hierarchies. In this lecture, Samantha King explores what Black, Indigenous, and postcolonial studies can teach us about meat, prey and love in the time of COVID. She shows how the materialization of the virus can be understood not simply as a reflection of colonial myths and infrastructures of racial capitalism, but as an active force in their reproduction. More hopefully, she asks audiences to think with her, and the scholars with whom she is in conversation, about a more just post-pandemic future. 

FREE EVENT but registration is required.