Carol J. Adams

I'm the author of "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory." It's been called "ground-breaking" and "pioneering" (interesting how our description of books draws from our invasive relationship to the land). Many say it is an underground classic, which I guess means that lots of people know and love it, but it goes unnoticed by the dominant media. Of course, when it first came out, that was slightly different. Then, right-wing reviewers around the world held it up as the latest example of academic excess and political correctness, which was funny to me, because I am not an academic. I used to teach a course I developed at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University on "Sexual and Domestic Violence: Theological and Pastoral Issues" -- but very infrequently. Basically, for as long as I have been an adult, I have been an advocate, an activist, someone trying to figure out how do we transform this d*#! world that is built on inequality. I have published more than 100 articles in journals, books, and magazines on the issues of vegetarianism and veganism, animal advocacy, domestic violence and sexual abuse. I am particularly interested in the interconnections among forms of violence against human and nonhuman animals, writing, for instance, about why woman-batterers harm animals and the implications of this (it's in my book Animals and Women). Besides advancing scholarship and developing theory in the area of interlocking oppressions, I have created a series of books that address the vegetarian/vegan experience: Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian Survival Guide, Help! My Child Stopped Eating Meat! and The Inner Art of Vegetarianism. I've worked to bring back into print Howard Williams's nineteenth-century classic text on vegetarianism, The Ethics of Diet. I have contributed prefaces to important vegetarian, vegan, and animal defense books and discovered an eighteenth-century vegetarian work that had never entered the vegetarian tradition. Because I am so deeply moved by my relationship with animals, I have authored books of prayers for animals for both adults and children. I am excited that the 20th anniversary edition of The Sexual Politics of Meat has been published! I also write about literary topics, including two "Bedside" books: one on Frankenstein and one on Jane Austen. I am finishing a memoir on caregiving and reading. I really love the Bedside, Bathtub, and Armchair Companion to Jane Austen. In Britain, it was nominated for an award by the Jane Austen Center in Bath! website: http://www.caroljadams.com/