Namulundah Florence was born in Bungoma, Kenya, and teaches at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She holds a Ph.D. in education from Fordham University. Her research and teaching interests explore the impact of conceptions of self and society on education policy and practice i.e., cultural assimilation and exclusion within the academy and beyond.
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Mylan Engel Jr. is a philosophy professor at Northern Illinois University, where he received NIU’s 2009 excellence in undergraduate Teaching Award. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Arizona. He specializes in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and animal and environmental ethics. He is the executive secretary of the Society for the Study of ethics and Animals, a position he has held since 2002. He is on the board of the Culture & Animals Foundation.
Mylan grew up in Alabama along the Gulf Coast, where his grandfather and two of his uncles were hog farmers. Steeped in Southern culture, he often went hunting and fishing during the first twenty years of his life. In graduate school, he discovered that eating meat is not necessary for good health. It was then that he realized that all of the suffering he had witnessed animals endure on his uncle’s farm served no significant human interest. He became a vegetarian as a result. In 1996, he became vegan and founded NIU’s Vegetarian education Group with Lisa Joniak and Ray Dybzinski. He has been faculty advisor for the group ever since. Mylan lives with three cats who graciously share their home with him.
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Hal L. Edwards has worked for more than half a century as a clergyman, marketplace coach, pastoral psychotherapist, and spiritual director. An ordained United Methodist pastor, he served local parishes in North Carolina, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Southern California before becoming President of Christian Laity of Chicago, where he served for almost three decades. During his decade as President of CityQuest, he facilitated conferences, workshops, and home gatherings for people who represent many of the world’s major religions. Hal lives with his wife, Jill, in Wauconda, Illinois. He is a father of four children and grandfather of ten.
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Kathryn Eddy is an interdisciplinary artist who uses sound, installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture to explore the complexities of the animal and human animal relationship. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, most recently the National Museum of Animals & Society (NMAS), and can be found in both public and private collections, including NMAS. She is a founding member of ArtAnimalAffect and has a studio in East Orange, New Jersey. Her website is kathryneddy.com.
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A political science graduate, Élise Desaulniers worked in research and marketing for over ten years. A special interest in food ethics and veganism led her to create the blog penseravantdouvrirlabouche.com (“think before you open your mouth dot com”), and then to write her first book, Je mange avec ma tête (Stanké, 2011; “I Eat With My Head”). She is now frequently asked to give presentations to ethics and philosophy classes at various colleges and universities, as well as during events at libraries and bookstores. Her website is edesaulniers.com.
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Margo DeMello received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from U.C. Davis in 1995, and currently teaches at Canisius College in the Anthrozoology Masters program, and at Central New Mexico Community College, teaching sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology. She is the Program Director for Human-Animal Studies at Animals & Society Institute, and the President of House Rabbit Society. She also volunteers for Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary and Prairie Dog Pals. She lives outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a husband, four Chihuahuas, three cats, a parrot, and a few dozen house rabbits. Her website is margodemello.com.
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Jason Del Gandio is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Public Advocacy at Temple University (Philadelphia). He has written on such topics as autonomy, immaterial labor, corporate control, the rhetoric of Barack Obama, performance art, the Occupy movement, and the relationship between neo-liberalism and the university.
His scholarship focuses on the performance, philosophy and rhetoric of social justice. “Performance” addresses issues of embodiment, habit and style; “philosophy” addresses cognition, reason and systems of thought; and “rhetoric” addresses audience, language and persuasion. His topics of interest also include activism, community organizing, enactments of resistance and liberation, and social movements. Theoretically, Del Gandio’s work is most directly informed by Italian Autonomism, phenomenology and poststructuralism.
His earlier work has focused on helping activists improve their communication skills and rhetorical strategies, the topic of his first book, Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activists (2008). It’s also related to a more recent, co-edited book titled Educating for Action: Strategies to Ignite Social Justice (2014). Much of his work is influenced by his own experiences with activism and social movements. Over the past fifteen years, Del Gandio has participated in the antiwar movement, fair trade campaigns, the global justice movement, Latin American solidarity work and more recently, the Occupy movement.
He is also beginning to explore social movement literacy: How do we help educate the general public on how to properly read and understand the nature and function of social movements? Del Gandio envisions that as a public pedagogy project—it exceeds the institutional boundaries of the academy and seeks to have wider social influence. You can read about his work at this website: https://klein.temple.edu/faculty/jason-del-gandio.
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Lorie Eve Dechar’s unique alchemical approach to the practice of traditional Chinese medicine emerges from her commitment to discovering a healthier and more integrated way for herself and other people to inhabit our planet. Her background includes a Master’s degree in acupuncture from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute and training in Archetypal Psychology, Gestalt, and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy as well as stints as a gardener, environmental activist, artist, poet and Zen student. Since co-founding A New Possibility, a healing and learning collaborative, in 2012 with her husband, Benjamin Fox, she has published two additional books, TheAlchemy of Inner Work: A Guide for Turning Illness and Suffering Into True Health and Well-Being and Kigo: Exploring the Spiritual Essence of Acupuncture Points Through the Changing Seasons. @anewpossibility, @loriedechar.
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Award-winning journalist and editor Susan E. Davis has written for a wide range of publications, including Sports Illustrated, Mademoiselle, The Nation and The Washington Post. She is the author of The Sporting Life and Baby Play. She is a national educator with the House Rabbit Society and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two children, two rabbits and miscellaneous other small creatures.
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| Kara Davis formerly worked at Lantern Books. She was raised in the military with a no-nukes activist parent, and cut her teeth with the Sanctuary movement on the Arizona border. Embracing complexity, her activism is centered in harm-reduction and includes healthcare access, police brutality and the prison system, animal rights, and anti-racist work. Kara currently teaches teams how to improve productivity and happiness. She credits much of what she knows to experience with ACT UP. |
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