Keri Cronin

Monthly Archives: March 2010


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On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow!

Today was the official kick-off to gardening season. We spent some time this afternoon turning over the soil and doing other spring yardwork tasks. Once the rain started coming down, we moved inside and planted some seeds. This year we borrowed a fancy-dancy seed growing operation from Linda, complete with full-spectrum lights, etc. I’ve tried to start seeds inside before with mixed results — I’m hoping this set-up will do the trick.

Chives, Parsley & Sweet Basil were the first seeds to be planted this year. The plants in behind the white pots are ones we picked up at the Niagara College open house last weekend.


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So Much Going On!

The last little while has felt like a whirlwind compared to the hermit-like state I’ve been in for most of my sabbatical thus far. Some highlights:

1)Last Friday I attended the Medieval Documents Symposium at Brock. This event was to celebrate the recent discoveries of some medieval documents in our Special Collections as well as some donations of documents to the university. My own area of research is the late 19th C/early 20th C, so it was a real treat to learn about an era so far removed from the one I spend all my time studying. This was a truly fascinating event. First of all, I’m always a little in awe when in the presence of material objects that have survived this long. It kinds of blows my mind! Secondly, the presentations made last Friday really embodied a spirit of interdisciplinary inquiry that I find especially engaging. For example, we heard from some of the folks involved in the DEEDS project at U of T. As I understand it, this is a piece of software that can calculate the approximate age of an undated Medieval charter based on the patterns of language that appear in that document. Very, very cool!

2)The 2010 Niagara Social Justice Forum took place last Saturday. I look forward to this event each year as it brings together faculty, students, staff, community members, activists, etc. for discussions, workshops and a chance to exchange ideas. The food that Strega provided was knock-your-socks-off delicious and it was pretty fantastic to have all that vegan/vegetarian food on campus. I just wish we had these kinds of eats at Brock all the time. Le sigh…

3)This week we had Erika Ritter come to campus to talk about her book, The Dog by the Cradle, The Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships. This is an amazing book that really delves into the many complexities of human relationships with nonhuman animals, both in our current era and in the past. The event on Tuesday included a lecture but also a discussion where most people in the room had an opportunity to ask questions or offer comments about the multitude of paradoxes that seem to define human-nonhuman relationships. It was a wonderful event, and I left campus that day feeling very energized and couldn’t wait to get back to work on my new research, a topic which is very much related to the themes explored in this book.

4)Tomorrow evening brings another animal-themed event, this time a book launch and fund-raiser. The book being launched is John Sorenson’s book, Ape (from the Reaktion series, Animal), and the funds are being raised for the Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary.

All this *AND* talk of a cross-lake ferry service between Toronto and St. Catharines makes it a pretty exciting week to be living in Niagara!


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Call for Papers (“Animals in Human Societies”)

The Brock Review
Call for Papers: “Animals in Human Societies”

The Brock Review is seeking scholarly essays and creative pieces for an upcoming issue on the theme of “Animals in Human Societies.” This issue will focus on changing ideas about the use and treatment of animals in contemporary societies and the ethical, economic and political significance of animal rights. This issue will be co-edited by Dr. John Sorenson (Department of Sociology, Brock University), author of About Canada: Animal Rights and Ape.

Possible topics might include:

-Animal/human bonds and mutual aid
-Representations of animals
-Animal rights and social justice
-Veganism, abolitionism and the rise of “happy meat”
-Normalization of speciesism
-Animal rights and anarchism

The Brock Review is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University. Scholarly essays submitted to The Brock Review should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages in length. Essays should adhere to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and include endnotes (where necessary) and a bibliography.

Manuscripts should be original works and should not be published (or under consideration for publication) in another format. Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal website by the 16th of July, 2010. Each submission must be accompanied by a 100 word abstract, and a brief biography of the author. It is the sole responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary copyright permissions for images accompanying an essay. If your essay is accepted for publication, you must provide copies of these permissions before your essay can be published.

Creative work (i.e.: paintings, photographs, poetry, short fiction or other types of work suitable to the online format of the journal) will also be considered for publication and should be submitted in an electronic format by the 16th of July, 2010. In the event that your submission is too large of a file to send submit online, CDs or DVDs can be sent to the address below. Creative work must be accompanied by a statement indicating the creator(s) of the piece have given consent to have it included in The Brock Review.

Dr. Keri Cronin
Editor, The Brock Review
c/o Department of Visual Arts
Brock University
500 Glenridge Ave.
St. Catharines, ON L2N 4C2
CANADA
keri.cronin@brocku.ca


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Women In Music Concert

Yesterday we took in the 18th annual Women in Music concert. This was only my second time attending this concert, but according to those who have been involved since the beginning the event has grown considerably over the past 18 years. It is a fund-raiser for Gillian’s Place and I certainly hope a lot of funds were raised yesterday.

In addition to performances by BroadBand and The Rockin Daisies, there was a special presentation of the Laura Sabia award to Dr. Rosemary Hale, Dean of Humanities at Brock. Very exciting!

I’d also like to give a shout-out to Anna Olson for not only making delicious vegan-friendly samosas for the event, but also for taking the time to list the ingredients in said samosas. Too often at these sorts of events I am unable to eat any of the food because I have no idea what ingredients were used to make them. Listing the ingredients may seem like a small thing, but for those of us who have to read labels carefully this gesture goes a long way!


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21 Day Vegan Kickstart

I’ve been vegetarian for somewhere in the ballpark of 13-14 years. My transition from meat-eating to vegetarian was a gradual one, so I don’t have an exact “anniversary” date. With the exception of a brief flirtation with pescetarianism a while ago, I pretty much fit the standard definition of a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I justified continuing to consume dairy and eggs by telling myself things like “well, cows need to be milked” or “chickens lay eggs anyhow” and “it isn’t like these animals are being killed for their milk or eggs.” Right. The more I learn about just how eggs and milk go from the animal’s body to the supermarket shelf, the more hollow these assurances sound.

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about animals lately. In my academic work I’m embarking on a major new research project that has me reading a lot of the ground-breaking literature on animal welfare (i.e.: Henry Salt’s 1894 Animals’ Rights). In the evenings I’ve found myself reading books like Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Enter the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and their 21 day vegan kickstart. I’ve decided to take the challenge this year. It is day 4 and so far so good — only one minor “slip up” to report. I had a handful of almonds the other day, the seasoned kind. Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered powdered sour cream on the ingredients list. *blech* As a vegetarian and someone with allergies I’m normally a pretty careful label reader, so I’m not sure how that one slipped by me. Lesson learned though!

Conceptually I don’t find the switch from vegetarianism to veganism that much of a stretch (seasoned almonds notwithstanding!) — sometimes it is just a matter of finding a vegan version of an old favourite (like this amazing recipe for cornbread!), and many of my favourite recipes are dairy and egg-free anyhow. However, the big stumbling block for me has always been cheese. I’ve been regularly buying soy milk instead of regular milk for a long time now, but for some reason I haven’t made the switch to dairy-free cheese. I’m going to give it a try this month though. My fridge is currently full of several brands of vegan cheese but I’ve yet to settle on one that I really like. Maybe it will just take some getting used to.

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