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Human-Animal Studies Newsletter
March 2020
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Welcome to the current issue of the Animals & Society Institute's Human-Animal Studies e-newsletter. 

I am sure we are all, at some level, feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic at this time. As we all hunker down and try to figure out what we can and should be doing in this extraordinarily somber situation, animals are not escaping our collective thoughts. 

Over the past few weeks, people understandably scrambled for information on pets and the coronavirus. To assist with these questions the U.S. Centers for Disease Control offered information here about  Animals and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) , with links to other information on the issue. And Colorado State University has provided a guidance on  What pet owners and veterinarians need to know about the coronavirus . And in a Psychology Today post, Zazie Todd shared,  COVID-19 and Planning for Your Pet: What pet owners need to know .

Shelters held concerns over volunteer, visitor, and staffing shortages and amid lock-down orders. And while in  Seattle, Washington animal adoptions were down nearly 50% , other shelters have seen an uptick in foster applications  during the recently enacted COVID-19 quarantine. Heartening examples of human-animal interactions have not been lacking, such as this one in which a therapy dog visited quarantined seniors to let them know they're not alone .

The pandemic has also spurred discussion of broader, and perhaps more problematic, systemic issues. Sonia Shaw in a piece in The Nation Think Exotic Animals Are to Blame for the Coronavirus? Think Again,  notes that “scientists have fingered bats and pangolins as potential sources of the virus, but the real blame lies elsewhere—with human assaults on the environment.” In an article in The Hill Coronavirus should be a wake-up call to our treatment of the animal world , author Cyril Christo’s argues that “the coronavirus did not manifest from nowhere. Our sadistic treatment and manipulation of animals for centuries has come back to haunt us. It is time for humanity to absorb the lessons of the animal world.” Finally, looking forward to solutions Lori Marino’s commentary,  Other Animals Are Not Humans’ Sacrificial Fall Guys , speaks to the use of animal testing to address the COVID-19 pandemic, with the conclusion that “using other animal species to solve human-made problems amounts to just more of the same hubris and human exceptionalism that spawned the COVID-19 pandemic in the first place.”

All of these issues are worthy of more thought, discussion, research, and action. As we move forward in these uncertain times, my wish is that we will find new ways to support each other, and the animals.

I hope you all stay healthy and well.

Best,
Gala

P.S. Assume that events noted within this HAS E-News are in flux. Although I have left calls and notifications for conferences in the newsletter, with travel restrictions, quarantines and lock-downs, many organizations have cancelled or postponed academic conferences. We assume we will see more of this. I suggest you contact the conference organizers to ascertain whether or not gatherings of interest will occur.

Editor’s note: The HAS e-newsletter is organized as follows: Jobs, grants, and calls are ordered chronologically by deadline dates, with the earliest first, and will continue to be posted until the deadlines expire. Books and articles include, where possible, links to access them directly from this email. Because publication reference styles vary by source, they might not always be consistent or pretty, but they will get you there.

Please send your submissions to:  gala.argent@animalsandsociety.org , and if at all possible include a URL link to your project or announcement. As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions!



ASI NEWS

Society & Animals  Volume 28, Issue 1 is out, with the following articles!

Elizabeth Vander Meer. 2020.  Alligator Song:  A Challenge to Spectacle, Product, and Menace  .  Society & Animals,  28(1), 1–20. 

Nathan Katz and Keri B. Burchfield. 2020.  Special-Needs Companion Animals and Those Who Care for Them:  Stories of Identity and Empathy Society & Animals,  28(1), 21-40.

Alison Langdon. 2020.  Fit for a Dog? Food Sharing and the Medieval Human/Animal Divide Society & Animals,  28(1), 41–57.  Society & Animals,  28(1), 41-57.

Kristopher D. White . 2020.  The Snow Leopard and Cultural Landscape in Contemporary Kazakhstan.   Society & Animals,  28(1), 58–80.

M. C. Marchetti-Mercer. 2020.  The Role of Companion Animals in the Process of Emigration: A Family Perspective  Society & Animals,  28(1), 81-100.

Corey Lee Wrenn . 2020.  Can Choice Feminism Advance Vegan Politics?    Society & Animals, 28(1), 101-104.

Nickie Charles. 2020.  Mutual Knowledge, Power, and Pleasure in Dog Training   Society & Animals,  28(1), 105–109.


HAS News and Opportunities

For those finding themselves at home with children normally in school, the Institute for Humane Education has offered  Ideas for Positive Outcomes During School Closures .

This month’s  LINK-Letter  from the National Link Coalition—the National Resource Center on The Link between Animal Abuse and Human Violence— includes a variety of items about the link between animal abuse and human violence.


Funding and Job Opportunities

The School of Social Work at Colorado State University  seeks a dynamic Postdoctoral Scholar in the area of health/behavioral health with a demonstrated commitment to instruction and research related to Human-Animal Interaction (HAI) and Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAIs). We will seek to hire a full-time, 12-month Postdoctoral Scholar to begin July 1, 2020. The applicant will have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. in Social Work or allied field before the position start date. To view the complete job announcement and to apply for this position please go to  Deadline is March 30, 2020.

Carroll College, a private, Catholic diocesan, Liberal Arts College (Helena, Montana) invites  applications for a full-time faculty member in the Anthrozoology department . In the context of Carroll’s mission-based focus on blending the liberal arts with strong pre-professional programs, a major component of the position is teaching, learning and assessment of undergraduate students in various areas of Anthrozoology. The program has strong equine and canine component.  Closing date is March 31st, 2020.  

The Society for Companion Animal Studies (SCAS) is releasing a three-year funding scheme  to support research, which furthers our understanding of the human-animal bond. For funding to be considered by SCAS, projects or research must be specifically related to the human-animal bond. Currently prioritized focuses are: animal assisted interventions, particularly with children; the human-companion animal relationship; and cross disciplinary working, among others. Direct queries to  info@scas.org.uk Grant proposals are due   March 31, 2020.

The application process for the University of Denver’s  Institute for Human-Animal Connection's two-year Post-MSW Research Fellowship  is now open. Master of Social Work (MSW) graduates who plan to pursue a career in social science research or program evaluation, specifically those interested in understanding the impacts of the intersections between people, other animals and the environment, are encouraged to apply. We are especially interested in considering applications from members of underrepresented groups, first generation college graduates or those who work on topics related to these issues.  Applications are due April 1, 2020. 

A funded PhD position is available for the BOAR ERC project “ Veterinarization of Europe? Hunting for Wild Boar Futures in the Time of African Swine Fever .”  Along with BOAR ERC team members, the PhD candidate will conduct their research at the  Department of Ecological Anthropology , Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). BOAR ERC will be a collaborative, ethnographic investigation of the relationship between three understudied subjects in anthropology – veterinary medicine, European hunting and wild boars – and how African Swine Fever is radically changing the dynamics between them. Applicants can contact  Ludek Broz   broz@eu.cas.cz  for further information.  Deadline April 17, 2020.

The Culture & Animals Foundation (CAF) is collaborating again with the  Special Collections Research Center  (SCRC) at the NC State University Libraries for the 2020 Tom Regan Visiting Research Fellowship. The fellowship is in memory of  Tom Regan  to promote scholarly research in animal rights. It will support the use of the SCRC’s Animal Rights Archive—the largest scholarly archive of animal rights collections in the country. The fellowship provides a $4,000 stipend awarded to a qualified applicant for research completed in residence at the SCRC for a term of no less than four weeks to begin on or after July 1. .  For more information and to submit an application, click  here Applications are due by April 30

The  Tiny Beam Fund Spring/Summer 2020 Fellowships  are open for Applications. The fellowships, ranging from $15,000 to $25,000, are meant primarily for academic researchers (including independent scholars) interested in helping to address negative impacts of global industrial food animal production (especially in low- and middle-income countries). There are no restrictions as to applicants’ residence / citizenship / location.  The application process runs through May 11, 2020.


Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida invites  applications for a one-year visiting position in Animal Studies  to start in Fall 2020. Candidates should have an M.S. or Ph.D. in animal studies or a related field of study with an emphasis on animals, and a commitment to the liberal arts. We seek an applicant committed to excellence in undergraduate teaching. Teaching load is seven courses per academic year (3-1-3), including sophomore/junior level courses in animal-focused classes (which might fall in the areas of society, culture, humanities, science, and animal electives) to contribute to our newly developed, interdisciplinary program in Animal Studies. Inquiries should be sent to Lauren Highfill at  HighfiLE@eckerd.edu Applications will be reviewed starting March 15, 2020, but the position will remain open until filled.

The Center for Biological Diversity is searching for  a Staff Scientist-Endangered Species  to advocate for the conservation of endangered species at its Portland, Oregon location. The position will involve working with a team of attorneys, communications specialists and advocates to protect endangered species across the United States. Contact Noah Greenwald, Endangered Species Director, at  ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org .

Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA is recruiting for  an Assistant Professor, Human-Animal Interactions  in the Animal Behavior program with a Ph.D. or equivalent in Human-Animal Interactions, Animal Behavior, Anthrozoology, or a related field, or D.V.M. with expertise in these areas. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Contact Susan Lewis lewiss@carrollu.edu.


New Books

Following are some of the books out this month that we are excited about!


Cherry, Elizabeth. 2019.  For the Birds: Protecting Wildlife through the Naturalist Gaze . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 

Harel, Naama. 2020.  Kafka's Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Ideman, W.I. 2020 Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology Cambria Press.

Roscher, Mieke. 2019.  Animals and Courts: Europe, c. 1200–1800 . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Struthers, Kelly Montford and Taylor, Chloë. 2020.  Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies . Oxford: Routledge.

Tague, G. 2020. An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood. Lexington Books.

Tong, Wenfei. 2020. The Family Life of Birds. London: Ivy Press.

Weil, Kari. 2020.  Precarious Partners: Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.



New HAS Journal Articles and Chapters
Following are some of the research articles and book chapters published this month in the field of Human-Animal Studies.

Following are some of the research articles and book chapters published this month in the field of Human-Animal Studies.


Derham, Tristan and Mathews, Freya. 2020. “Elephants as refugees.”  People and Nature.

Linda Jaasmaa, Isabelle Kamma, Annemie Ploegera, Mariska E. Kretb, 2020. The exceptions that prove the rule? Spontaneous helping behaviour towards humans in some domestic dogs.  Applied Animal Behaviour Science Volume 224 March 2020, 104941.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2020.104941

Jones R.C. 2020. Speciesism and Human Supremacy in Animal Neuroscience. In: Johnson L., Fenton A., Shriver A., Eds.  Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals. Advances in Neuroethics.  Cham: Springer.

Teresa Lloro & Christian Hunold. 2020. The public pedagogy of neighborhood Facebook communities: negotiating relations with urban coyotes,  Environmental Education Research , 26:2, 189-205, DOI:  10.1080/13504622.2019.1690637

Melson, G. F. 2019.   Human-animal play: Play with pets . In P. K. Smith & J. L. Roopnarine (Eds.), Cambridge handbooks in psychology.  The Cambridge handbook of play: Developmental and disciplinary perspectives  (p. 103–122). Cambridge University Press.

Robinson, Lisa and Watkinson, Julie. 2020. Galgos and Podencos in Spain: A Rescue’s Perspective.  Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research.

Tauber, S.C. 2020. Critical animal studies, critical international relations theory, and anthropocentrism. In: S. C. Roach, Ed.  Handbook of Critical International Relations . Elgaronline.  https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788112895

Janette Young, Holly Bowen-Salter, Lisel O’Dwyer, Kristen Stevens, Carmel Nottle & Amy Baker (2020) A Qualitative Analysis of Pets as Suicide Protection for Older People,  Anthrozoös , 33:2, 191-205, DOI:  10.1080/08927936.2020.1719759

Arian D. Wallach, Chelsea Batavia, Marc Bekoff, et al. 2020. Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation.  Conservation Biology https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13494

Calls for Papers: Journals

The  Journal of Vertebrate Biology   is pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue, “Dogs and conservation: current and emerging considerations,” with Guest Editors Dr. K. Whitehouse-Tedd (Nottingham Trent University, UK), Dr. N. Richards and Dr. M. Parker (both from Working Dogs for Conservation, USA). For information:  katherine.whitehousetedd@ntu.ac.uk  and CC the Editor-in-Chief (Prof. Carl Smith;  carl.smith02@ntu.ac.uk The deadline is March 31, 2020.

Human Animal Interaction (HAI) Section of the American Psychological Association has issued a Call for Papers for a special issue covering “Therapies Incorporating Horses to Benefit People: What are They and How are They Distinct?” Please direct any inquiries (e.g., suitability, format, scope, etc.) about this special issue to the guest editor: Wendy Wood  wendy.wood@colostate.edu The deadline for manuscript submittal is November 30, 2020.



Calls for Papers: Conferences
and Workshops
Please check with the program organizer about whether or not the conference will be held.

An  upcoming symposium on the topic of "Critical Misanthropy”  will be held at the University of Amsterdam May 15, 2020. To submit a paper, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography to  criticalmisanthropy@gmail.com   before April 1st 2020.

Doing animal health in a more-than-human world, First Conference for the Network of Veterinary Humanities, has issued a  call for abstracts  for this October 8-9, 2020 at the Messerli Research Institute, University of Vienna, Austria. Specific to the approaches of veterinary humanities is that animals and human-animal relationships play a crucial role. At this first conference, we aim to further explore the implications of this perspective: How does veterinary knowledge translate into animal bodies and minds and render certain configurations of knowledge-based practice in society rational? And how is professional work in the field of animal healthcare situated in economic, political, spatial and socio-cultural contexts? The conference will be a multidisciplinary event. Proposals from disciplines such as (but not limited to) Veterinary Science, Sociology, Political Science, Literature, History, Anthropology, Cultural and Media Studies, Philosophy, Geography, Art, Education Science, Gender Studies, Psychology and Law are welcome.  Deadline is April, 2, 2020.

Students and young professionals in science, humanities and the arts working on marine mammal conservation, welfare and rights are invited to submit abstracts for the Student-Advocacy Session at the Superpod 7 conference, July 20-24, 2020, Friday Harbor, Washington, USA. Contact Dr. Lori Marino  lorimarino@kimmela.org  or Mariah Kirby,  mariahkirby@kimmela.org Deadline is May 15, 2020.

The 2020 Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) Conference Special Session on Animals and Culture with the Animals and Society network has issued a  call for papers dealing with the multifaceted roles and representations of animals in popular culture . The conference will be held at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, New Hampshire, October 23-24, 2020.  Proposals are due June 1, 2020.

A call is out for presentations for a panel on “Pathogenic entanglements
and multispecies encounters: what narratives for what responsibilities?” at the forthcoming Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK & Commonwealth Annual Conference, ASA 2020: RESPONSIBILITY, which will take place at the University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, 24-27 August 2020. Abstract: The One Health agenda seeks to redress excessive anthropocentrism in disease-management but creates new biopolitical hierarchies of pets and pests. What responsibilities—as causality and accountability—are framed and contested in narratives of pathogenic multispecies entanglements? Contact: Rosie Sims ( rosie.sims@graduateinstitute.ch ) or Emmanuelle Roth ( er477@cam.ac.uk ).

•••

Save the date: The Faculty of Kinesiology of the University of New Brunswick is hosting a two-day conference on Sport, Animals, Ethics, May 26-28, 2021. Paper proposals will be welcomed from all disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Watch for the Call for Abstracts in October 2020. For more information, contact Gabriela Tymowski-Gionet  tymowski@unb.ca  and Sam Morris  morrissp@miamioh.edu .

Save the Date: The Minding Animals— Animals and Climate Emergency Conference  (ACEC) conference and events will be held over 22 to 29 July, 2021, in Sydney, Australia, in a central Sydney city venue. A conference registration website and the call for abstracts will appear mid-year. In the meantime, please see  mindinganimals.com  for further information. For information, please contact Rod Bennison at  acec@mindinganimals.com  


Meetings, Conferences and Presentations

Below are upcoming meetings and conferences for which the submission deadlines have passed, or for which submissions were not requested. Again, p lease check with the program organizer about whether or not the conference will be held.

Winged Geographies: Birds in Space and Imagination . April 16-17, 2020, University of Cambridge. 

Vegetarian Epiphanies. From Realization to Changing Eating Habits. April 16-17, 2020,  Rennes , France, and May 28-29, 2020,  Santa Barbara , California, USA.

Animaterialities: The Material Culture of Animals (including Humans).   Sixteenth Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars. April 24–25, 2020, University of Delaware.

Animals on the Mind 4.0:  Humane Communities: Diversity, inclusion and welfare in human-animal-environment interactions , May 14-15, 2020, University of Denver, Colorado. 

The Inaugural Conference of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS) with the theme  Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Mass Extinction  will take place May 27-29, 2020, University of British Columbia Okanagan.

The 29th  International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) Annual Conference  will occur June 29th - July 3rd, 2020 at the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, UK. The conference theme is “One Health, One Welfare: Wellbeing for all human-animal interactions.”

HAS Law and Policy
This intermittent section of the HAS e-Newsletter includes selected commentary and information on academic inquiry, legal developments, and proposed and enacted legislative actions related to animal policy, in the space where nonhuman animal interests meet politics and the law.


Books, Chapters and Articles

Abbate, C., 2020. Animal Rights and the Duty to Harm: When to be a Harm Causing Deontologist.  ZEMO  https://doi.org/10.1007/s42048-020-00059-3

Bloch, Stefano and Martinez, Daniel, 2020. Canicide by Cop: A geographical analysis of canine killings by police in Los Angeles.  Geoforum https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.02.009


Heath Grant, Cathryn Lavery & Kimberly Spanjol, 2016. Understandings about animal cruelty:  Why animal abuse is a critical concern for law enforcement practitioners, and promising antidotes to youth violence.  The Latham Letter . Volume XXXVII, Number 3.
                       
Heath Grant, Cathryn Lavery & Kimberly Spanjol, 2015. Critical understandings about animal cruelty for law enforcement practitioners.  Journal of Law Enforcement , 4 (5) 1-12.

HÄYRY, M., 2020. Causation, Responsibility, and Harm: How the Discursive Shift from Law and Ethics to Social Justice Sealed the Plight of Nonhuman Animals.  Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , 29(2), 246-267. doi:10.1017/S096318011900104X

Cathryn Lavery, Heath Grant & Kimberly Spanjol, 2016. Towards a typology of dog fighting: An examination of motive and behavior typologies and recommendations for criminal justice and mental health practitioners.  Behavioral Health , 4, (2), 1-10.           

Offor, I., 2020. Animals and the Impact of Trade Law and Policy: A Global Animal Law Question.  Transnational Environmental Law,  1-24. doi:10.1017/S2047102519000402

Thompson, M., Cochrane, A., & Hopma, J., 2020. Democratising food: The case for a deliberative approach.  Review of International Studies,  1-21. doi:10.1017/S0260210520000017

Wallach, A.D., Batavia, C., Bekoff, M., Alexander, S., Baker, L., Ben‐Ami, D., Boronyak, L., Cardilini, A.P., Carmel, Y., Celermajer, D., Coghlan, S., Dahdal, Y., Gomez, J.J., Kaplan, G., Keynan, O., Khalilieh, A., Kopnina, H., Lynn, W.S., Narayanan, Y., Riley, S., Santiago‐Ávila, F.J., Yanco, E., Zemanova, M.A. and Ramp, D., 2020. Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation. Conservation Biology. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13494

 Waltz, D., 2020.  The “Embarrassing” Endangered Species Act: Beyond Collective Rights for Species . Columbia Journal Of Environmental Law. 45(1).


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!








Gala Argent, PhD
Program Director

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