Laura Wright, PhD | Gender, Animals, and Veganism

In this episode of the Engaged Jain Studies Podcast, Arihanta Institute professor and lead organizer of the Vegan Studies Initiative, Jonathan Dickstein, PhD, interviews Laura Wright, PhD—Professor of English at Western Carolina University and the scholar widely credited with naming and framing “Vegan Studies.” Drawing on Prof. Dickstein’s guiding questions, Dr. Wright traces her own “radicalization” for animals, clarifies what Vegan Studies includes (and excludes), and articulates its aims as both an academic field and a lens for cultural critique.

The conversation explores how gender shapes public narratives about animals and food—why veganism is still coded as feminine, “elitist,” or emotionally naïve, and how such framings police bodies and politics. Building from Wright’s signature focus on “the vegan body as a contested site” across literature, popular culture, advertising, and new media, they examine how fiction and film illuminate lived experience and ideology. Listeners also get a preview of Wright’s forthcoming Arihanta Institute course, which uses novels and cinema (think Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, and films like Beatriz at Dinner and Raw) to interrogate gendered readings of veganism.

Course Spotlight — 1021 | Gender, Animals, and Veganism

• Starts: Monday, September 15, 2025 (materials available)
• Live Zoom Q&As: Fridays Sept 19, 26, Oct 3, Oct 10 • 9–10 a.m. PDT
• Format: Live online + self-study • ~4 hours recorded video • Weekly readings
• Focus: How gender shapes vegan identity; reading fiction/nonfiction and film through a Vegan Studies lens; why female-coded veganism is often dismissed or pathologized—and how to read against that grain.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & LINKS

• Course 1021 | Gender, Animals, and Veganism with Laura Wright, PhD
• Vegan Studies Initiative @ Arihanta Institute | Courses, Speaker Series, Research & More!

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ABOUT OUR PODCAST GUEST

Laura Wright, PhD is Professor of English at Western Carolina University, specializing in postcolonial literatures and theory, ecocriticism, and animal studies. She is the author of Writing Out of All the Camps: J. M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement (Routledge, 2006/2009) and Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial Environment (University of Georgia Press, 2010). She co-edited Approaches to Teaching Coetzee’s Disgrace and Other Works (MLA, 2014) and authored The Vegan Studies Project (UGA Press, 2015). She is also editor of Through a Vegan Studies Lens (UNV Press, 2019). Her work often centers on how the vegan body—male and female—is depicted as a contested site across literature, popular culture, advertising, and new media.

ABOUT OUR PODCAST HOST

Dr. Jonathan Dickstein specializes in South Asian Religions, Religion and Ecology, and Comparative Religious Ethics. He received his doctoral degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he wrote his dissertation on ancient Indian animal taxonomies and their relevance for religious ritual and dietary practice. Jonathan’s current work focuses on Jainism and contemporary ecological issues, and accordingly extends into Critical Animal Studies, Food Studies, and Diaspora Studies.

Jonathan has published in a wide array of...