Renan Larue

Career Larue is an assistant professor of French literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As of 2021, he ran the Vegan Studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Writing In Le végétarisme et ses ennemis (2015), Larue surveys the history of vegetarianism in the West. The book discusses writers who defended vegetarianism, including Pythagoras, Porphyry and Plutarch, and examines responses to vegetarian ideas in the major monotheistic religions, with attention to the Catholic Church. It also covers the Age of Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Nicolas de Condorcet, Maupertuis, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Morelly, and ends with the founding of the Vegan Society by Donald Watson, Elsie Shrigley and others in the 20th century.

In Le véganisme (2017), co-authored with Valéry Giroux, Larue presents veganism as a philosophy, way of life, and social and political movement based on avoiding, as far as practicable, the subjugation, mistreatment and killing of sentient beings. In Le végétarisme des Lumières (2019), he examines medical and philosophical debates about vegetarianism in 18th-century France. He wrote the preface to La révolution antispéciste ("The antispeciesist revolution"), a selection of twelve texts from the journal Cahiers antispécistes ("Antispeciesist notebooks").

Awards Larue received the Best PhD Dissertation Award from the University of Picardy Jules Verne in 2011.

Publications (2014). (2015). (2017). (2019). (2020). Larue, Renan. La pensée végane: 50 regards sur la condition animale [Vegan thoughts: 50 perspectives on the condition of animals]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.