Wesleyan University Professor to Present Annual Lecture

Press release

Wesleyan University professor to present annual Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture in Philosophy at Quinnipiac University on Feb. 26

Hamden, Conn. - Wesleyan University professor Lori Gruen will present the 38th annual Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture, “Empathy and Justice Beyond the Human,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 26 in the Mount Carmel Auditorium.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

In our concern for the more than human world, many discussions have focused on individual animal suffering and threats to entire species. The lecture will explore what happens when we instead ask questions about what meaningful relationships between humans and animals are possible, what makes their lives livable, and what role empathy can play in helping us to promote better relationships with others, both human and nonhuman.

Gruen is a leading scholar in animal studies and feminist philosophy. She works primarily in ethics and social and political philosophy and is a prolific scholar. She is the author, co-author and editor of over a dozen books, including “Ethics and Animals: An Introduction,” “Entangled Empathy,” “Animal Crisis,” “Carceral Logics,” “Critical Terms for Animal Studies,” “Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth” and “Ethics of Captivity.” Her current projects include exploring captivity and the ethical and political questions raised by carceral logics.

Gruen's work focuses on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional philosophical investigations such as women and other marginalized genders, people of color, incarcerated people and non-human animals.

She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center for Bioethics, was a Faculty Fellow at Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Center for Animals and Public Policy, is a fellow of the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network and was the first and founding chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Center for Prison Education at Wesleyan.

Gruen has documented the history of The First 100 chimpanzees in research in the US and has an evolving website that documents the journey to sanctuary of the remaining chimpanzees in research labs, The Last 1000.

The Stiernotte lecture series is named in honor of the late Alfred P. Stiernotte, who initiated the teaching of philosophy at Quinnipiac more than 50 years ago, and has been funded largely from an endowment provided by his estate.

For more information, call 203-582-8652.