Tell your friends about ASI:
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Human-Animal Studies Newsletter
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Dear Colleague,
Welcome to the current issue of the Animals & Society Institute's Human-Animal Studies e- newsletter. I hope that this issue has information that is of use to you. Please let me know what you'd like to see! For future editions of this newsletter, please send submissions to
margo@animalsandsociety.org
.
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The Animals and Society Institute is excited to announce the call for proposals for the sixth annual
Human-Animal Studies International Development Project (HASIDP)
. The purpose of this competitive program is to provide one non-American university per year the resources to build its own human-animal studies program. Human-Animal Studies (HAS) programs have proliferated at universities in some countries. Still, a great many universities have faculty and students who are interested in developing such programs, but lack the resources to create them on their own. This program fills that gap by providing the financial and knowledge-based resources that such scholars, students, and universities need to build their own HAS programs. Application Deadline: January 15, 2019. The amount of the award will range from $10-$15,000, depending on the budget submitted by the applicant. As part of the award, the winner may choose to have a visiting senior HAS Fellow visit the university for up to one week in the year after the award is given, to provide logistical and pedagogical support (these costs will not be taken from or included in the financial award).
The Animals & Society Institute and the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invite applications for the third annual Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute program for advanced graduate students and early career scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies. This interdisciplinary program, inaugurated in 2017, is focused on graduate students and those in the first few years post-Ph.D. or other terminal degrees like M.F.A., M.S.W., D.V.M., or J.D., and will enable 20-30 participants to work on their dissertations or publications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted by the Center for Advanced Study, for one intensive week. The 2019 Institute will take place from July 14-21, 2019, inclusive.
Find out more here.
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Funding and Job Opportunities
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The Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) is pleased to announce the availability of additional funding for research to investigate the health, education and wellness outcomes of animal-assisted activity or therapy, both for the people and animals involved. This additional funding has been made available through a growing collaboration with Pet Partners, the leading therapy animal organization in the United States, with the mission of improving human health and well-being through the power of the human-animal bond. To be eligible for this additional funding, investigators must incorporate Pet Partners registered volunteer handler-therapy animal teams into their proposed research. Pet Partners registered volunteer teams must meet
high standards
, which support patient and public safety; outstanding animal welfare; and greater consistency for research purposes. This announcement is a supplement to
HABRI's 2019 Request for Proposals
. All of the guidelines, requirements, and deadlines associated with HABRI's 2019 RFP apply to this additional funding opportunity. Please indicate if you are applying for this supplemental funding. For more information about securing the participation of Pet Partners registered volunteer therapy animal-handler teams for proposed research, please contact Dr. Taylor Johnson,
TaylorJ@petpartners.org
.
The
Culture & Animals Foundation
(CAF) is now accepting applications for our 2019 grants. We fund academic and artistic projects that raise public awareness about animals, awarding grants in three categories: Research (scholarly projects about animal advocacy and its cultural roots and impact); Creativity (original work by artists and thinkers that expresses positive concern for animals); and Performance (public performances and exhibitions to raise awareness of animal advocacy). Grant applications are due on or before January 31st 2019. Selected grantees will be notified by March 31st. Past recipients are welcome to apply again for funding of a new endeavor or continued development of a previously funded project, although priority will be given to new grantees. You can find the grant application
here
. (Please make sure to read the instructions carefully.) Past grantees can be found
here
. If you have any questions, check out our
FAQs
or email us at
admin@cultureandanimals.org
.
The
Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education
is inviting academic researchers, nonprofit and other organizations to apply for its first round of grants which will support humane education outreach programs or research into the efficacy of humane education. The foundation is especially interested in receiving proposals for research. The awards, which will range from $5,000 - $10,000 for a one-year grant and up to $15,000 for a two-year grant, will support Latham’s goals of promoting kindness to animals as the first step in encouraging kindness to one another, our country, other nations, and the world. Applications should demonstrate how the proposed research or program achieves those objectives, as depicted in the “steps” illustration on the Latham Foundation
website.
The deadline for applying is Dec. 28.
The UCLA School of Law Animal Law and Policy Small Grants Program
is seeking small grant proposals for its 2018-2019 funding cycle. The program is happy to receive applications as soon as they are ready, but we will not make any offers of funding until we have reviewed all applications after the funding period closes. This Program is designed to support legal and non-legal empirical scholarship to advance animal law and policy reform. To learn more about the Program, including previously funded projects,
please use this link.
Applications are welcome from any field as long as the potential application of the research to animal law and policy reform is clear. We have a particular interest in fields such as psychology, including moral psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics, and other social sciences. In addition, this year we are especially interested in empirical research applicable to legal reform focused on animals used in experimentation, animals harmed through pest control or “nuisance wildlife management” activities, and dogs at risk of being classified as “dangerous.” Please be aware that we do not fund any type of research on live animals, and we cannot provide funding to scholars based at institutions outside the United States. We are open to collaborative projects with non-U.S.-based scholars, so long as the principal investigator is based at a U.S. institution of higher education throughout the funding period. Applications must be received by December 1, 2018, via email or mail, for the 2018 application cycle.
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The field of veterinary medicine has long been overlooked by the humanities and the social sciences. Meanwhile, also due to the emergence of the interdisciplinary human-animal studies as well as the growing discourse of veterinary ethics, more and more research is looking at veterinary issues from the perspective of the humanities /social sciences. We would like to use this opportunity to connect with fellow researchers and built up a network of scholars working on topics surrounding veterinary medicine. This could be, including but not limited, scholars from sociology, history, anthropology, philosophy or veterinary medicine itself who look at the discipline/the profession from other than only the natural scientific angle. The start of the network will be an email-list, but further developments such as building a website, meetings or conferences are not excluded and depend also on the initiative of network members. If you want to join the email-list please subscribe here (if you already have an google-account)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/veterinary-humanities
or email
julia_gutjahr@yahoo.de
.
We can’t believe how many Human-Animal Studies courses are showing up at colleges around the year! Check out these two new ones!
The Kerulos Institute
is offering a three-part webinar series from experts in psychological trauma and trauma-informed care:
- LEARN about trauma, and how to support trauma recovery and avoid re-traumatization
- GAIN powerful insights on how to support Animals healing from trauma
- JOIN a community supporting Animal dignity and freedom
Our third presenter is Dr. Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her current research explores how early life experience influences societal culture and moral character. She is working intensively on the evolved developmental niche for young children (natural birth, extensive on-demand breastfeeding, constant touch, caregiver responsiveness, free play, multiple adult caregivers and extensive positive social support), early life experience effects on moral development in the US and in China, and the integration of indigenous wisdom.
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Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!
Anderson, J. E., Asselin, S., Attebery, S., Greene, A. Z., Harper, T., Berns, F. G., ... & Yates, M. (2018).
Gender and Environment in Science Fiction
. Lexington Books.
Breyer, T. and T. Widlok. (2018).
The Situationality of Human-Animal Relations: Perspectives from Anthropology and Philosophy
. Columbia UP.
Ferdowsian, H. (2018).
Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives
. University of Chicago Press.
Gruen, L. and F. Probyn-Rapsey, eds. (2018).
Animaladies: Gender, Animals, and Madness
. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Schäfer, D., Siebert, M., & Sterckx, R. (Eds.). (2018).
Animals Through Chinese History
. Cambridge University Press.
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Following are some of the latest research articles in the field of human-animal studies:
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Southland, A., Dowling-Guyer, S., & McCobb, E. Effect of Visitor Perspective on Adoption Decisions at One Animal Shelter.
Miranda-de la Lama, G. C., Estévez-Moreno, L. X., Villarroel, M., Rayas-Amor, A. A., María, G. A., & Sepúlveda, W. S. Consumer Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare-Friendly Products and Willingness to Pay: Exploration of Mexican Market Segments.
Voslarova, E., Kubesova, K., & Vecerek, V. Characteristics of Cats Admitted to Czech Shelters.
Raya, J., Girardi, C. E. N., & Hipólide, D. C. Corticosterone Assimilation by a Voluntary Oral Administration in Palatable Food to Rats.
Bir, C., Croney, C. C., & Widmar, N. J. O. US Residents’ Perceptions of Dog Welfare Needs and Canine Welfare Information Sources.
Eagan, T. (2018). Evaluation of Enrichment for Reptiles in Zoos.
Howell, C. P., & Cheyne, S. M. Complexities of Using Wild versus Captive Activity Budget Comparisons for Assessing Captive Primate Welfare.
Myers, K., Mohammed, F., Rickard, J. W., Meyer, D. E., & Spaulding, A. D. Unwanted Horse Population in Illinois: Perceptions of Horse Owners, Non-Horse Owners, and Equine Industry Stakeholders.
Boletín de Arte
n 40/2019: Special Thematic Issue: Animals and Art History; Submission of articles: November 30, 2018 - February 28, 2019. Accepted languages: Spanish, English, French and Italian. Co-editors of the monographic issue: Reyes Escalera Pérez and Concepción Cortés Zulueta. In order to be accepted for consideration and double blind peer reviewed evaluation, the articles have to address the topic of Animals and Art History with a maximum of 31,500 characters (including spaces) and with no more than 10 images. The submission has to be made on-line, by registering in the
on-line platform of the Boletín
. Please find detailed submission guidelines in the
Boletín’s webpage
,(scroll down for the guidelines’ English version).
Boletín de Arte
, an open access journal edited since 1980 by the Department of Art History, University of Málaga, proposes a special thematic issue commemorating its 40th anniversary. This special issue will focus on the representation, presence and agency of non-human animals in art history and visual culture. This Animals and Art History issue of Boletín de Arte is open to address the subject of non-human animals from all periods, methodologies and approaches of art history. For any queries contact Reyes Escalera (
drescalera@uma.es
); Concepción Cortés (
ccorteszulueta@uma.es
)
The Journal
Social Sciences
will be publishing a special issue, with the theme of: "We are Best Friends": Animals in Society, edited by Leslie Irvine. Friendships between humans and non-human animals were once dismissed as sentimental anthropomorphism. After all, who could claim to be friends with a being who did not speak the same language? Animals’ emotions were also questioned. However, decades of research on the emotional and cognitive capacities of animals have made it possible to recognize human-animal friendships as true relationships involving mindedness on both sides. Friendships with animals manifest many of the same characteristics as friendships between humans. Both parties understand the other as having interests, preferences, and other aspects of subjective experience. Both enjoy the shared presence that friendship entails, with its moments of intersubjectivity that comes with knowing another being. Both friends develop ways of communicating, apart from or in addition to spoken language. Having an animal as a best friend often takes the form of companionship understood as the “pet”, but the relationship comes in other forms, too. People who work with animals often characterize their non-human partners as friends. People who work with search-and-rescue dogs, herding dogs, or police dogs develop, and even depend on, the closeness of best friendship. The same holds for equestrians of all sorts, as horses and riders must understand each other’s bodies and movements intimately. In some situations, animals provide the sole source of affection and interaction in people’s lives. Homeless people who live on the streets with animal companions often develop best friendships largely through 24/7 togetherness. In this light, this Special Issue on humans and animals as best friends seeks to explore the various forms these friendships take. Moreover, it aims to shed light on what these friendships mean for society, broadly construed. In short, how do human-animal friendships, and best friendships, in particular, expand the existing interdisciplinary knowledge of the roles of animals in society? The editor encourages researchers from all disciplines and all methodological and theoretical approaches to submit contributions.
Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2019.
Find out more here.
The journal
Religions
will be publishing a special issue on the subject of animals in world religions, to be edited by Dr. Anna Peterson. In recent decades, nonhuman animals have become an important focus of scholarly work in the humanities and social sciences. Anthropologists, literary scholars, historians, philosophers, and others have examined diverse issues including the significance of animals in art and literature, the role of real animals in economics, politics, and war, human moral attitudes toward animals, and a host of other issues. Animals play an important role in almost all religions, including world religions as well as smaller native traditions. Religious studies scholars have addressed topics such as animal sacrifice, animals in sacred stories and myths, symbolic animals such as totems, animal deities, and animals as moral exemplars or villains. The literature has grown in recent years, but it remains small and scattered. This special issue on animals in world religions aims to explore important and interesting contemporary scholarship on the topic. Our scope is deliberately broad – we hope to receive articles that examine many different religious traditions, in different historical periods and geographic regions. We prefer articles that focus on concrete questions and arguments, rather than on broad surveys or overviews. We also prefer studies that look at the place, treatment, and experiences of real animals in religious communities and practices. Studies of symbolic or mythical animals are also welcome, but we are especially interested in those that add a new dimension to the literature, either by employing innovative theoretical and methodological approaches or showcasing unfamiliar topics. In all cases, the goals are to expand scholarly understanding and knowledge of the important place of nonhuman animals in religious thought and practice.The journal issue will provide a valuable complement to the existing literature, by extending the range of religious traditions addressed, by encouraging innovative approaches, and by focusing on studies of real rather than purely symbolic or mythical animals.
Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2019.
Find out more here.
The field of human-animal interactions and the exploration of new ways in which animals can facilitate physical, social, and psychological well-being are growing rapidly. Much of the research, however, has been applied in nature – focusing on assessing a specific issue or testing the effectiveness of interventions. In contrast, far less research has evaluated the basic psychological processes that underlie human-animal interactions. This work is critical in helping inform existing interventions and creating the foundation for the development of novel treatments. Thus, the aim of this special issue on Basic Social and Personality Psychology Research on Human-Animal Interactions, in the
Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin
, is to promote and advance research regarding the psychological roots of human-animal interactions from social and personality perspectives. Papers for this special issue may include (but are not limited to) one or more of the following topics: fundamental relationship processes underlying the human-animal relationship; social cognition and perception related to animals; animal stereotyping and discrimination; understanding the role animals play within the self-concept; attitude formation and attitude change in animal preferences; and contagion of emotions between humans and animals. All submissions focusing on basic research and processes underlying human-animal relations from a social and personality psychology perspective (experimental, correlational) will be considered for this the special issue. Although all types of HAIB submissions will be consider for the special issue, preference will be given for empirical and descriptive investigations. Manuscripts should not exceed 8000 words and should conform to the sixth edition of the APA style manual. Manuscripts should be submitted using the regular HAIB online system, specifying that the submission is for the special issue on basic research on social and personality psychology in human-animal interactions. Papers should be submitted by November 30 with reviews to be completed by June 2019. Please direct any inquiries (e.g., suitability, format, scope, etc.) about this Special Issue to the guest editors: Anthony Coy (
coya@usf.edu
) and Christopher Holden (
holdencj@appstate.edu
).
Find out more here.
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Are you going to a conference this year? If so, we would love your help with distributing ASI flyers to promote our human-animal studies programs! If you’d like to help, please email
margo@animalsandsociety.org
. Thank you!
Graduate Workshop: Knowing Through Animals
: The Animal Turn in History of Science. February 2, 2019, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University. For more information, email
ai2298@columbia.edu.
Public Values in Conflict with Animal Agribusiness Practice. February 23, 2019, UCLA Law School.
Animal/Language: An Interdisciplinary Conference
. March 21-23, 2019, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Please submit all questions to
animallanguage2019@gmail.com
.
ANIMAL REMAINS: Biennial Conference of The University of Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC). April 29-30th, 2019, Humanities Research Institute, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Animals and the Home. May 1, 2019, Institute of Historical Research, London, UK.
6th Conference of the European Association for Critical Animal Studies (EACAS): “Rethinking revolution: Nonhuman animals, antispeciesism and power. May 22-24, 2019, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
Animal Rights and Animal Politics in Asia: International Convention of Asian Scholars
(ICAS 11). July 16-19, 2019, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Calls for Papers: Conferences
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On August 8-11, 2019, the 127th APA Convention in Chicago will include a bold new "
Summit for Animals
." This one-hour poster session will bring together up to 40 presentations, on diverse aspects of Animal-Human Relations. This session is hosted by APA Division 32 (Humanistic), in cooperation with Divisions 17 (Counseling), 48 (Peace), and 24 (Theoretical/Philosophical). It is followed by a social hour. The deadline to submit a poster is 5 pm on December 3,
through Division 32 in the
APA portal.
British Animal Studies Network Meeting: Emotion
. April 26-27, 2019, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. If you are interested in giving a paper addressing the topic ‘Emotion’ from whatever disciplinary perspective please submit your title, with an abstract of no more than 200 words and a brief biography (also of no more than 200 words). These should be included within your email – i.e. not as attachments. Please send them to
erica.fudge@strath.ac.uk
. The deadline for abstracts is January 18, 2019. Presentations will be 20 minutes long and we hope to include work by individuals at different career stages. Sadly we have no money to support travel, accommodation or attendance costs. The organizers would welcome papers that deal with such issues in contemporary and historical settings, and would especially like to see papers that address these issues from contexts outside the UK, including the Global South. Papers are welcomed from across animal studies, including disciplines such as (but not limited to) geography, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, classical studies, history, science and technology studies, ethology, philosophy, psychology, behavioural sciences and ecology.
Although human exploitation of nonhuman animals is by no means a modern development, it has grown exponentially in the last century. It is under capitalism that human abuse of their power over nonhuman animals has reached a massive scale, with a corresponding massive worsening of its consequences. This includes the suffering of trillions of sentient beings exploited in miserable conditions and killed for trivial purposes in the majority of cases, but also the massive contribution to global warming of industries like agribusiness, as well as the negative impact these practices have on social justice, intra-human violence and human health. The animal liberation movement therefore not only calls for justice and compassion for nonhuman animals, but also confront the results of industrial capitalism and modernity with a radical consciousness-raising claim. This claim is radical because it provides the most accurate condemnation of privilege and the status quo by revealing how inequality does not exist only at the intra-species level, but also at the inter-species level, and that both levels are closely interlinked and thus ought to be addressed jointly. In the spirit of the field of Critical Animal Studies, the aim of this conference is to encourage scholars, students and activists to rethink the revolution that animal liberation theory represents since its inception in the 1970s, a social movement bringing the fight against oppression to its logical conclusion. The conference welcomes proposals from a variety of scholars and disciplines – including critical academics, independent researchers, students and activists – reflecting on the intersecting themes of the conference: power, total liberation and antispeciesism. The conference also welcomes papers focused on any topic critically addressing nonhuman animals’ exploitation from a social science or humanities perspective. The conference encourages the approach of critical animal studies and non-speciesist perspectives on all sorts of discrimination, oppression and abuse towards farmed animals, animals in labs and animals in entertainment, among others, including animals living in the wild.
Please send your abstracts by December 15 to
cae@upf.edu
. All abstracts must be written in English. The conference language is English. Abstracts should include:
- Abstract Title of 30 words maximum
- Abstract Text of 500 words maximum
- A brief biography of the author (150 words maximum) including name, affiliation and contact details
The number of submitted abstracts per author is limited to two. We strongly encourage submissions by women and other socially underrepresented groups.
“Living with Animals 4”
is an Animal Studies conference about all things animal and human-animal interaction, occurring at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). EKU, located in Richmond, Kentucky, just south of Lexington, “The Horse Capital of the World,” began offering the first undergraduate degree in Animal Studies in 2010. We offer a Living with Animals conference every 2 years, and are pleased again to have an international set of speakers. The conference is now over three days,
March 21-23, 2019.
On Sunday, March 24, the day after the conference, we are hoping to have an optional day-long excursion to Salato Wildlife Center, and then to Buffalo Trace Distillery, both in Frankfort, Kentucky, but this is still in the planning stages. The conference centers on our ever-present relationships with animals examined through the arts and humanities, sciences, and applied fields. Consistent with the conference theme, our focus this time around is our diverse relationships with animals. The theme derives from Hal Herzog’s well-known and influential book,
Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals
. We hope presenters will find the relevance of their topic to the theme, but of course any topic related to animals or human-animal interaction is welcome. The
special day-long session,
“Living with Horses”
, a continuing conference in the Living with Animals conference, is co-organized by Gala Argent and Angela Hofstetter. We are also hoping to attract presenters on the theme of
“Living with Insects,”
to draw attention to the precarious nature of so many insects in the world today.
Abstracts of 200 to (approximately) 400 words should be sent to
livingwithanimals@eku.edu
. The first line of the abstract should be the title of the talk, and the next line(s) should be the authors’ names, positions, affiliations, and email addresses. Following this should be a blank line, followed by the text of the abstract. All should be single spaced. Reference to existing bodies of work might be made. Please also indicate if you would like your presentation to be a
talk
or a
poster
, or if you are offering a
panel
. (We are open to other forms of presentations.) Posters are an excellent way to present some scientific and artistic works, and allow the presenter to engage closely with conference attendees who are most interested by their work. Posters will be available during the buffet lunch on Saturday, 23 March. In addition, provide a one-page CV of your most relevant work and experience. Individual paper presentation time will be 20 minutes, including time for questions. Panels (usually 3 people; maximum time, 1 hour) are welcome. All presentations and panels will be reviewed by the organizers. Abstract submission deadline: December 10, 2018.
The fourth biennial “
Living with Horses
” conference, again organized and co-chaired by Gala Argent and Angela Hofstetter, is scheduled Friday, March 22, 2019. In keeping with the theme of this year’s
Living with Animals
conference,
Living with Horses
will explore the various roles horses play in human lives and the impact of those roles on both humans and horses. We are pleased to announce that equine ethologist, writer and horse trainer, Lucy Rees, will keynote this year. For decades Lucy has studied wild and feral horses in Wales, Spain and Uruguay and used her work in search of the easiest way of dealing with horses, one which is universally applied and is successful. Her 2017 book, Horses in Company, challenges commonly held conceptions of equine dominance hierarchies—something which is not observed in horses living under truly natural conditions—which form the basis of many schools of horsemanship.
Additionally this year, in honor of equine academic, researcher and wild horse advocate, Karen Dalke, we invite submissions to the Karen Dalke Memorial Panel on Wild Horses, with topics covering any aspect of current wild or feral horse research, representation, cultural heritage, and conservation. For the standard Living with Horses presentations, we are particularly interested in ways of thinking about the human-horse interface which consider the ways that lives are intertwined at various levels of scale, with an eye toward how individual and cultural conceptions and understandings of equine subjectivity, or objectivity, play out in these interactions. While it is our hope that presentation topics concern this sub-theme, other topics related to the human-horse interface are welcome.
Please note whether you want your abstract considered for Living with Horses, and/or the Karen Dalke Memorial Panel. Address questions about
Living with Horses
to co-conveners Dr. Gala Argent,
gala@me.com
, and Angela Hofstetter,
ahofstet@butler.edu
. Questions about the conference details or submission process go to
livingwithanimals@eku.edu
. Send your conference submissions to
livingwithanimals@eku.edu
. For more information on the Living with Animals conference, visit:
https://livingwithanimals.eku.edu
(still under construction). DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: December 10, 2018 (Late submissions will be accepted, although the selection process will start mid-December).
The ‘Animals and the Home’ conference will explore the relationship between animals, humans and the home in diverse forms. The study of the home is an important area in geography, history and anthropology but, as some animal studies scholars have remarked, animals figure in it infrequently. Animal presence is rarely mentioned in studies of idealised homes, domestic practices or family relationships. In recent decades studies of human-animal relationships have also developed and diversified, and a large body of scholarship now explores animal-human histories. While the cultural, economic and social significance of pet animals has been an important theme in this literature, discussions of these animals are sometimes abstract and removed from the everyday spaces and places they inhabited. Less attention has also been paid to the role of utility animals and household pests. This conference aims to bring home and animals together – thinking about the relationship between animals and ideas and emotional understandings of home, but also home as a lived experience. Proposals are invited from scholars working on all periods and geographical areas, bearing in mind that understandings of home often varied at different times and in different places. While the conference focuses on the past, we welcome interest from scholars in all disciplines.
Papers might address (but are not limited to) the following themes:
- Changing discourses or cultural ideas of home and how animals figured in these representations
- Visual representations of animals in the home
- Emotional understandings of home and animals
- Domestic organisation, rituals and routines and the role of animals
- Animals and boundaries, thresholds and movement in the home
- Understandings of roles of animals in the home: utility, pet, pest etc.
- Human-human relationships (family and other) and animal-human relationships
- The impact of animals on space and material culture in the home
- How far we can consider animal agency in the home
The AHRC Pets and Family Life Project invites research proposals for the conference which will be held at the Institute of Historical Research on Wednesday May 1st 2019. Please submit 200-300 word abstracts with a short biography and contact details by January 7 2019 to Elle Larsson at the following email address:
elle.larsson@rhul.ac.uk
In light of the rising threat of global climate catastrophe, scholars of the nonhuman turn have largely focused their attention on vast environmental processes and forces like global warming and the Anthropocene—on the massive temporal and spatial dimensions of what Timothy Morton calls the “hyperobject.” But the interspecies relations that make up Morton’s hyperobject at the same time always operate on the level of what we call the micro-object—the invisible world of microorganisms and other forms of living matter that permeates every aspect of human and nonhuman life. Our ASLE roundtable seeks to engage these neglected lives that evade human perception, blend object-like into human environments, or exist on the border between life and death—the overlapping worlds of bacteria, fungi, algae, dust, pollen, soil, coral, and plant life that constitute the interspecies social. According to Morton, hyperobjects demand new modes of thinking and living together: We solicit papers in literary and cultural studies that investigate how these lively ‘micro-objects’ implore us to suspend, alter, or reorder our political and cultural systems, habits of thought, and aesthetic or representational modes. Microorganisms like fungi, bacteria, and algae point us to an image of life outside of individuality, life as essentially relational and generative, multiplying: What might a revitalized politics or justice look like when we take on the perspective and the dimensions of these tiny organisms? How does life on the micro-scale compel us to suspend the usual human order, to reconsider our cultural exchanges, or to reorder our (bio)political and ethical systems? At the same time, we seek to uncover in our literary and cultural histories a microbial aesthetics that reckons with the implications of being alive in a wildly diverse network of multispecies relations—relations that operate on multiple scales, diverging temporalities, and according to patterns that cannot be reduced to either harmony or conflict.
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Calls for Proposals: Books
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Submissions are sought from academics, scholars, research aspirants and animal advocates for the edited collection,
Approaches to the Literary Animal.
The rise and expansion of Animal Studies over the past decades can be seen in the explosion of various articles, journals, books, conferences, organisations, courses all over the academic world. With the publication of Peter Singer’s
Animal Liberation
in 1975 and Tom Regan’s
The Case for Animal Rights
in 1983, there has been a burgeoning interest in nonhuman animals among academics, animal advocates, and the general public. Interested scholars recognise the lack of scholarly attention given to nonhuman animals and to the relationships between human and nonhuman, especially in the light of the pervasiveness of animal representations, symbols, and stories, as well as the actual presence of animals in human societies and cultures. Animals abound in literary and cultural texts, either they are animals-as-constructed or animals-as-such. However, we can approach any literary text from a theoretical lens where the representation of nonhuman animals is the main operative analytic frame. In literature nonhuman animals are given the titular role, they carry symbolic function, they speak human language and so on. But these create problematics and bear the politics of representation. Papers should be within 3000-4000 words following the latest MLA style sheet and must have abstract of 250 words with keywords. The papers should accompany relevant endnotes, references and authors’ bio-note. They will be scrutinised and reviewed thoroughly and checked for potential unethical practices. Selected papers will be collected in a book (with ISBN) to be published by a reputed publisher. Submission Deadline: November 30.
Submit to: studiesanimal@gmail.com.
Submissions (essays and poetry) are sought for an edited collection called American Genocide: Indians & Other Animals. The deadline for (proposal) submissions: December 15, 2018. Editors: Dr. Thomas C. Gannon and Matt Guzman,
tgannon2@unl.edu
Critical scholarship on the indigenous humans of North America and scholarship in Critical Animal Studies often remain separate and rarely appear in dialogue with one another. And yet, both fields of study can benefit greatly from being placed in conversation. There has not been a volume to date that adequately grapples with the similar exploitation and extinction of these two marginalized “Others.” The crucial intersection of the human indigenous and other non-human species entails both trope and reality, as both a longtime ideological comedy of errors and misprisions—and a longtime material tragedy of genocide and extinction. To be sure, this "bestial" conjunction may be said to be a foundational matrix of Western civilization. American Genocide puts these voices of genocide and extinction in conversation with one another, including new critical scholarship as well as newly published poetry. The bringing together of ingenious and non-human, however, is not meant to conflate these two unique populations, which is the all-too-often move in ideologies of oppression. Instead, by combining these topics and genres—human and non-human, scholarly study and poetry—this book attempts to speak back against such colonialist models of hierarchy and separation. The collection also introduces a new transdisciplinary approach, Eco-Colonial Discourse theory, an approach towards discourses across species. Furthermore, it is through uncovering the ways in which non-human exploitation serves as the originary template for the de-humanization of disempowered human groups that American Genocide begins of a hybrid field of study that extends and complicates Native American Studies, postcolonial theory, and Critical Animal Studies. As we are theorizing it, Eco-Colonial Discourse theory is intended to be a descendant of postcolonial theory; however, this new approach recontextualizes, or repositions, questions of imperialism and power with special attention to the intersections between the Native American and nonhuman animal. As colonial discourse theory itself issues from Edward Said's seminal perception that the Foucaultian matrix of language and power is central to the success of the colonial enterprise, "race" itself has ultimately always been the invention of colonial discourse-as-power—as a rationalization at last for the cruel exercise of that power. And so "the plight of the Redman" has been largely about language, about discourse, in a thoroughly poststructuralist sense. Similarly, the categorical distinction of “animal” in western discourse (as Jacques Derrida has also claimed) remains an issue of power informed by language. In this way, American Genocide seeks ways to identify and move beyond eurocentrism as well as anthropocentrism. We invite original essays from a wide range of disciplinary fields such as (but not limited to) literary criticism, ethnic studies, gender studies, history, art history, and philosophy that illuminate intersections between the Native American and nonhuman animal
Submit your 300-500 word abstract to
tgannon2@unl.edu
and
matthew.guzman@huskers.unl.edu
by Dec. 15th, 2018 with the subject line “American Genocide Abstract.” Please also include C.V. Notification of acceptance will be sent by Jan. 15th, 2019. Completed essays (5,000—9,000 words) will be expected by May 15th in MLA or Chicago Manual of Style format. We also invite submissions of previously unpublished poetry that bridge, intersect, or complicate the indigenous human and nonhuman animal.
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As you can see, there is a tremendous amount of activity and progress going on today in the field of human-animal studies, and we always invite your input and participation. Your
donation
to the Animals & Society Institute will enable us to continue to expand the field in many more ways and work in conjunction with others around the world who share these goals.
Thank you for supporting our Human-Animal Studies efforts!
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Margo DeMello
Human-Animal Studies Director
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