Laura Wright (literary scholar)

Laura Wright is a professor of English at Western Carolina University. Wright proposed vegan studies as a new academic field, and her 2015 book The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror served as the foundational text of the discipline. As of 2021 she had edited two collections of articles about vegan studies.

Education
Wright received a bachelor's in English from Appalachian State University in 1992, an MA in English from East Carolina University in 1995, and a PhD in Postcolonial Literature and World Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004.

Academic interests
In addition to vegan studies, Wright's academic and research interests include postcolonial literature and theory, South African literature, ecocriticism, animal studies, and food studies.

Impact
Wright's 2015 book The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror which proposed the academic field "vegan studies," served as the foundational text for and introduced the discipline. She has since edited two collections of vegan studies articles, including Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism (2019) and The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies (2021).

Reviewers and academics called the book a "foundational work" and "the foundational text for the nascent field" of vegan studies. In her foreword to the book, Carol J. Adams says, "Thanks to this work, we now have a new category: the vegan studies-loving vegan." Cristina Hanganu-Bresch and Kristin Kondrlik, in their introduction to Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice: The V Word, said Wright's proposal had framed vegan studies as a "critical lens to be applied to other cultural artifacts, and, indeed, to a whole new theory of culture." Kathryn Dolan said in the journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment that it "will clearly become an area of further study." Jodey Castricano and Rasmus R. Simonsen called it "the first vegan studies monograph to be published by a university press."

Dario Martinelli and Ausra Berkmaniene said, "The presence and legitimacy of 'vegan studies' within the academic world, especially since Wright cared to formalize the expression and define a paradigm, is something that should no longer require an explanation or a justification," and that she "coined the expression". Emelia Quinn and Benjamin Westwood called the book, "the first major academic monograph" on veganism and the humanities.

Marianna Koljonnen in 2019 called Wright "the founder of vegan studies". Marzena Kubisz, also writing in 2019, called The Vegan Studies Project "the monograph which creates the foundations for vegan studies".

Wright has given several talks to academic conferences about the introduction of vegan studies, including keynote addresses at Towards A Vegan Theory: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference at Oxford University, Animal Politics: Justice, Power, and the State at, and a lecture, The Dangerous Vegan: The Politics of Scholarship, Identity and Consumption in the Anthropocene, at Appalachian State.

Appalachian State University offered a fall 2019 Honors Seminar, What is Vegan Studies? Exploring an Emerging Field, saying that with The Vegan Studies Project 's publication "a powerful transdisciplinary field has emerged which is in turn influencing work across the disciplines" and Wright's works the field's "founding texts".

In January 2022, Wright was found at the center of faculty-student controversy. Serving as the Faculty Senate Chair at the time, she publicly spoke out against student's concerns regarding Residential Assistance DEI training. Following a Fox News article in which student Resident Assistants spoke about how the training conflicted with their views, Wright organized a t-shirt fundraiser campaign via CustomInk and posted it to WCU Faculty Senate social media to dismiss students concerns. This campaign was posted to the Faculty Senate Instagram and had a caption which included an advocacy to "make fun of this nonsense." In response to this move made by the Faculty Senate and Wright, students at WCU's campus stated that "the fact that the Faculty Senate can mock students opinions just because they don't agree them ... makes us feel like we don't have anybody to go to at the school." Chancellor Kelli Brown spoke to the Faculty Senate at their January meeting regarding this issue. In her statement she said, "We need voices to be heard whether we agree or not. We want it to be comfortable for everyone here. We will accomplish this by having open discussions and encouraging dialogue. No faculty, staff, or student should be mocked or receive threats of any kind."

Awards and honors

 * University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018)
 * National Humanities Center Fellowship (2012)
 * Modern Language Association Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship (2008)