Emelia Quinn (born 1992) is a British scholar ofEnglish known for her work developingvegan theory. She is anassistant professor at theUniversity of Ottawa.
Quinn studied for aBA in Film and Literature at theUniversity of Warwick, graduating in 2013. She then went on to study for anMA in Culture and Thought after 1945 at theUniversity of York, which she completed in 2014.[1] It was at York that she was introduced toanimal studies by Jason Edwards.[2] She went on to read for aDPhil at theUniversity of Oxford.[3] Herthesis, which was submitted in 2019, was entitledThe monstrous vegan: reading veganism in literature, 1818 to present.[4] The thesis wassupervised byAnkhi Mukherjee, and examined by Anat Pick andSophie Ratcliffe.[2] While at Oxford, Quinn co-edited, with Cassie Westwood, thecollectionThinking Veganism in Literature and Culture: Towards a Vegan Theory. This was published in 2018 byPalgrave Macmillan as part of their Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature series.[5]
Quinn briefly taughtart history at theUniversity of Birmingham before joining theUniversity of Amsterdam (UvA) as aLecturer inEnglish in 2019. In 2021, she became anassistant professor ofworld literatures andenvironmental humanities at UvA.[3] In the same year, she published themonographReading Veganism: The Monstrous Vegan, 1818 to Present withOxford University Press's Oxford English Monographs series.[6] This book was based on Quinn's doctoral thesis.[2] In 2021, Quinn an became editor of the Oxford University Press andEnglish Association journalThe Year's Work in Cultural and Critical Theory,[3][7] and, in 2022,Edinburgh University Press publishedThe Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies, which Quinn co-edited withLaura Wright.[8] In 2024, she moved to the Department of English at theUniversity of Ottawa.[1]
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Drawing uponqueer theory, especiallySusan Sontag's essay "Notes on 'Camp'", Quinn argues for a vegan form of thecamp aesthetic that she calls "vegan camp". She defines this as
an aesthetic lens and sensibility that, while acknowledging the extremity of animal suffering, seeks to draw sustenance from what has previously only caused pain. It ... offers a riposte to the unprecedented scale of animal death and the lived experience of late capitalism in which political resistance feels futile. In drawing pleasure from a state of mass violence, vegan camp provides sustenance for individual vegans while refusing a damaging sense of the vegan as a morally righteous "beautiful soul." ... A camp sensibility performs the inescapable complicity of vegan lives in mass suffering. This performance of complicity ... provides a way of working through horror and continuing to fight for change in the face of the seeming impossibility of living an ethical life. In this sense, complicity affords a temporary mode of ethical affiliation, a way of occupying the present that acknowledges rather than castigates feelings of failure and insufficiency.[9]
Examples of the vegan camp aesthetic identified by Quinn include a work ofscrimshaw in theHull Maritime Museum'sTurner and the Whale exhibition,Lady Gaga'smeat dress, and certainmock meats.[10]
Reading Veganism introduces the "monstrous vegan". Quinn identifies four traits of the monstrous vegan:
First, monstrous vegans do not eat animals, an abstinence that generates a seemingly inexplicable anxiety in those who encounter them. Second, they are hybrid assemblages of human and nonhuman parts, destabilizing species boundaries. Third, monstrous vegans are sired outside of heterosexual reproduction, the product of male acts of creation. And, finally, monstrous vegans are intimately connected to acts of writing and literary creation.[11]
Thetrope of the monstrous vegan begins, Quinn argues inReading Veganism, withthe creature created byVictor Frankenstein inMary Shelley's 1818 novelFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.[11] She further identifies monstrous vegans in the work ofH. G. Wells (includingThe Island of Doctor Moreau andThe Time Machine),Margaret Atwood (including theMaddAddam trilogy),J. M. Coetzee (specifically the character Elizabeth Costello ofthe eponymous novel andThe Lives of Animals), andAlan Hollinghurst (inThe Swimming-Pool Library andThe Sparsholt Affair).[12][6]
| Interviews | |
|---|---|
 Knowing Animals Episode 153: Emelia Quinn on Vegan Camp | |
| Knowing Animals Episode 185: The Monstrous Vegan with Emelia Quinn |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
