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Human-Animal Studies Newsletter
September 2019
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This will probably be my last newsletter for you all, but please do stay in touch with me! I will be at ASI until my replacement is hired, but after that, I can always be reached at margo@rabbit.org. Thank you for all of your work in the field, and for your support!

Margo
Funding and Job Opportunities
The UCLA School of Law Animal Law and Policy Small Grants Program is pleased to announce that the application submission period is open now and closes at midnight on December 16, 2019. Please forward this email to researchers or academic research departments you think may have interest in this opportunity. 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 behavioral economics, psychology, including moral psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics, and other social sciences. We value both qualitative and quantitative research, and priority is given to proposals with well-crafted research methodologies. In addition, we are especially interested in empirical research applicable to legal reform focused on animals currently underrepresented in legal animal advocacy, such as 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 considering 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. Supervising professors of graduate student applicants must agree to serve as co-principal investigators. Please email any questions to Dr. Taimie Bryant at bryant@law.ucla.edu and copy alp@law.ucla.edu on the email.
 
The St. Louis Zoo is hiring a new Animal Welfare Scientist . This new position will formally propose, develop and execute animal welfare research on the campuses of the Saint Louis Zoo, the results of which will be communicated through peer-reviewed and popular publications, as well as through presentations at scientific, AZA and other professional conferences. Find out more at this link.
HAS News
A new initiative, the Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School will launch during the 2019–2020 academic year as an interdisciplinary “think and do tank.” The program is dedicated to developing new strategies to address industrialized animal cruelty and its impacts, and to drawing attention to the questions of conscience raised by humanity’s treatment of animals. The program will be led by two faculty directors, Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law Doug Kysar and Senior Research Scholar & Lecturer on Law Jonathan Lovvorn , along with an executive director, Viveca Morris , who recently graduated with dual masters degrees from the School of Management and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Find out more here.
 
Newcastle University hosts a range of seminar series during the academic year 2019-2020. Expressions of interest are now welcome from scholars who are either based in the UK or visiting the UK and who carry out ground-breaking research in the areas of biomedical education, agricultural and food ethics, and animal ethics, as well as on the intersections of these fields. For seminar presentations, please send the title and abstract (of around max. 500 words) of your proposed presentation at any time (but before the end of January 2020) to jan.deckers@ncl.ac.uk, as well as an indication of what dates and times would suit you best.  
The University also hosts lecture series during the academic years 2019-2020 (limited availability) and 2020-2021. Please send the title and abstract (of around max. 500 words) of your proposed presentation at least one year before the date that would suit you best to jan.deckers@ncl.ac.uk . Please note that the submission of an abstract and title does not guarantee an invitation to present.

New Books
Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!

Bonyhady, T. (2019). The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A Rodent History of Australia . Text Publishing.
Braid, B. and H. Muzaffar. (2019). Bodies in Flux: Embodiments at the End of Anthropocentrism . Brill.
French, R. D. (2019). Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian society (Vol. 5492). Princeton University Press.
Goldhahn, J. (2019). Birds and the Culture of the European Bronze Age: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives . Cambridge University Press.
Guenther, M. (2019). Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume II: Imagining and Experiencing Ontological Mutability . Springer Nature.
Hadley, J. (2019). Animal Neopragmatism: From Welfare to Rights. Palgrave.
Jalongo, M. R. (2019). Prison Dog Programs : Renewal and Rehabilitation in Correctional Facilities. Springer, Cham.
Leshko, I. (2019). Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries . University of Chicago Press.
Louv, R. (2019). Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives—and Save Theirs . Algonquin Books.
Sinha, S., & Baishya, A. R. (2019). Postcolonial Animalities . Routledge.
Tuomivaara, S. Animals in the Sociologies of Westermarck and Durkheim. Palgrave.
Vinnari, E., & Vinnari, M. (Eds.). (2019). Sustainable governance and management of food systems: Ethical perspectives. Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Wurgaft, B. A. (2019). Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food (Vol. 69). Univ of California Press.
   
To read about them, visit this link!
New Research
Journals
TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies , Vol. 5, has just been published. You can find it here.
 
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Monash Bioethics Review on “Moral Duties to Novel Beings”
Guest Edited by: Julian Koplin (University of Melbourne) and Christopher Gyngell (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute)
Scientific advances are making it possible to create new kinds of beings. Organisms that contain both human and animal cells (human-animal chimeras) have been created to model human disease, and might be used in the future to generate human organs for transplant. Human brain organoids (which resemble miniature in vitro human brains) are now used to study brain development and neurodegenerative disorders. Genome editing has been used to create monkeys with ‘humanised’ brains, revealing new insights into the genetics of human cognition. Synthetic embryos formed from stem cells are being used to study early human development. The brains of dead animals have been partially “revived” hours after the animal was slaughtered, potentially paving the way for brain resuscitation in humans. These strands of research are helping further scientific discovery, but they also pose imminent ethical questions. For example: Does a synthetic embryo that is functionally equivalent to a human embryo have the same moral status? How complex does a brain organoid need to become before we have moral obligations toward it? How does ‘humanising’ a monkey’s brain affect its moral standing? This Special Issue aims to investigate these and other questions raised by the creation of novel kinds of beings. This Special Issue is planned for publication in the second half of 2020. Individual articles will be processed for advanced publication immediately upon acceptance. We are seeking papers between 4,000 and 10,000 words. When submitting online (via the journal website below), please be sure to indicate that your submission is intended for this Special Issue on Moral Duties to Novel Beings. For additional submission and formatting requirements, please see Instructions for Authors available via the Monash Bioethics Review website . If you have any questions or wish to discuss proposals and/or abstracts, please write to  koplinj@unimelb.edu.au. Submission Deadline: December 31.
 
The Journal of Sustainable Tourism is accepting submissions for a special issue on wildlife. This special issue will include theoretical and empirical papers exploring the impacts of tourism on wildlife. Manuscripts within the special issue will critically evaluate especially the impacts - positive and negative - of current forms and practices of wildlife tourism on the conservation status of wild species, and on the welfare of individual animals. It will establish correlates of good and bad outcomes in both captive and wild settings. The issue will also address tourists’ values and responsibilities, with respect to wildlife tourism, as well as the responsibilities and duties of institutions that act as gatekeepers to wildlife tourism experiences - including the provision of information on impacts to customers and ensuring distribution of benefits among local stakeholders and wildlife. The deadline for submissions is October 1 .

The interdisciplinary journal  Animals  invites submissions to a special issue on the following topic: Animal Ethics: Questioning the Orthodoxy. Guest editors: Herwig Grimm and Susana Monsó (Messerli Research Institute Vienna). Deadline for submissions: September 30 .
It has become commonplace to refer to the success of animal ethics and the animal turn in philosophy. Since Singer and Regan published their ground-breaking works more than forty years ago, animal ethics has become an institutionalised field of research. This is mirrored in the appearance of entire journals, book series, text books, BA, MA and PhD programmes, conferences, research institutes, etc. devoted to it. To use a metaphor, animal ethics is no longer a toddler, but a teenager, full of energy, beginning to question its heritage and its future. This Special Issue aims to channel this rebellious spirit in order to help lay down the foundations for a prosperous adulthood. Therefore, we invite submissions that call into question the orthodoxy in animal ethics. With this Special Issue, we aim to deliver an overview of new solutions to canonical problems and new problems that were previously unseen. We expect to map out new directions in the field of animal ethics and contribute to clarifying the self-understanding of the discipline. Please kindly note that for submissions to this special issue there is a word limit of 8,000 words (references not included). Further information can be found in this  link . Informal inquiries can be sent to:  susana.monso@vetmeduni.ac.at

The editors are organizing a special issue on the psycho-social impact of human-animal interactions (HAIs) on health in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. This Special Issue, guest edited by Aubrey Fine, is open to any subject area related to the psycho-social benefits of human-animal interactions. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities. Manuscripts should be submitted online at  www.mdpi.com  by  registering  and  logging in to this website . Once you are registered,  click here to go to the submission form . Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website. Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. Please visit the  Instructions for Authors  page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this  open access  journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions. Deadline for manuscript submissions:  September 30 .
Upcoming Meetings
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!
 
Canine Science Conference. October 18-20, Phoenix, AZ.

11th Asia for Animals Symposium . October 18-20, Dalian, China

27 th Annual Animal Law Conference : “Representing Animals: Elevating Animal Status.” October 25-27, Portland, OR. http://animallawconference.org


Embodied Equines. Nov. 13-15, Cal Poly Pomona. Any questions may be directed to  equinehistory@gmail.com .

Animals in Ethnography . November 21-22, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

Rethinking Canid-Human Relations. November 21-22, Brock University.

British Animal Studies Meeting: 'Movements.' November 22-23, University of Leeds.

2020 Events

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

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

Calls for Papers: Conferences
Vegetarian Epiphanies. From Realization to Changing Eating Habits. April 16-17, 2020, Rennes, and May 28-29, 2020, Santa Barbara. Université de Rennes 1, Université Rennes 2, and the University of California at Santa Barbara are pleased to announce a double academic conference on vegetarian epiphanies, these moments of powerful insight that bring new understanding and trigger transitions to plant-based diets. In anticipation of this event, we encourage the interdisciplinary confrontation of points of view in the humanities (anthropology, cultural studies, economics, animal studies and critical animal studies, history, geography, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc.). Papers will discuss the social, cultural, ideological, political, behavioural as well as ethical aspects of vegetarian epiphanies.  Submission guidelines, key dates and detailed information on the conference are available here: Rennes and Santa Barbara . Proposals for papers should be approximately 250 words in length and be uploaded before November 1.

Animaterialities: The Material Culture of Animals (including Humans): Sixteenth Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars. April 24-25, 2020, University of Delaware. The Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware invites submissions for graduate student papers that examine the relationship between material culture and animal studies for its biennial Emerging Scholars Symposium (April 24–25, 2020). This symposium merges the interdisciplinary study of animals—and the related critical conversations surrounding animality, species, agency, objectivity, and subjectivity—with material culture studies. Five years after the Audubon Society’s startling Birds and Climate Change Report, we continue to hear about the prices non-human animals pay for human choices: extinction, loss of habitat, and poisoned food sources. The present moment begs, more than ever, critical questions about the intersections between the material world and the (fellow) animals with whom we share it. We thus propose the theme “animaterialities,” a term which acknowledges the constant presence of other-than-human animals as physical bodies entangled in various anthropocentric systems, whether political, economic or cultural. Animaterialities encourages participants to consider animals not as passive forms of matter for human use, but as active beings capable of resilience in the face of humans’ material domination and exploitation. Finally, it recognizes the necessary turn material culture studies must take when applied to other-than-human animals, as opposed to artificial, vegetal, or mineral subjects/materials. Proposals by current graduate students and recent graduates (May 2019 or later) should be no more than 250 words. Up to two relevant images are welcome. Send your proposal and a current c.v. (two pages or fewer) to emergingscholars2020@udel.edu . Proposals must be received by December 5 . Confirmed speakers will be asked to provide digital images for use in publicity and are required to submit their final papers and presentations/slide decks ahead of the conference. Travel grants will be available for participants.
 
CALL FOR PAPERS: RETHINKING CANID-HUMAN RELATIONS. BROCK UNIVERSITY, NOVEMBER 21-22. Our relations with canids are particularly intense: we welcome some into our homes as family members but others are regarded as demonic creatures to be exterminated. What do these relations tell us about ourselves and our societies? What do our relations with canids mean for our relations with other animals? What efforts are being made to protect canids from exploitation? This conference focuses on wild and domesticated canids and their relationships and interactions with humans but we encourage contributions that consider implications for human relations with other animals generally. We encourage papers that take a critical perspective and consider trans-species social justice. Registration is free, the conference is open to all. Please submit a 250 word abstract to animalconference@brocku.ca by September 30.
Calls for Papers: Books
by Sune Borkfelt
The world is in crisis: socially, politically, environmentally. We are increasingly confronted with notions of otherness as the world is shrinking – we interact with diverse cultures, ideas, agendas as we never have before. Yet, at the same time, we are increasingly polarized in our thinking, with the rise of a global right-wing agenda challenging a progressive wave of policies the world over. Yet, these crises seem to pale in consideration of the increasingly urgent climate crisis. There is little debate left on whether the climate is changing, though there are still some people arguing about the cause. As McKibben notes, this is no longer a question for science, but rather, what we need is an interpretation and communication of the urgency of the problem which produces meaningful and effective change. For many years, the question of whether fiction could articulate the vastness of the problem was up for debate. Ursula Heise, in Sense of Place and Sense of Planet (2008), identifies a failure on behalf of fiction to intervene as due to the complex nature of climate change, which happens on a scale, and over spatial, temporal, and cultural divides that are unprecedented historically. Nonetheless, there have been increasing amounts of narratives – including in literature – which concern themselves with global climate change. For example, Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi, has been seen in ecocriticism as a potential answer to this call.

While climate change is sometimes framed as a largely human concern, or even as nature ‘striking back’ against human over-use and abuse of its resources, the growing climate crisis creates problems for human and nonhuman animals alike. Indeed, there is now widespread recognition that climate change is a leading cause of a current mass extinction event affecting species across the globe. This raises questions about how the current crisis connects to our historical disregard for the interests and capacities of other species, and of whether changing attitudes to human-nonhuman relations can help point towards new, more sustainable ways forward. In Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal (2010), Sherryl Vint notes that among science fiction’s ‘most promising’ themes is the ‘aspiration that humans might interact with an intelligence other than our own and be transformed by it’. Vint asks the question of what imagining animals through science fiction may do, and points out that the other species with whom we already share the planet could be those ‘aliens’ that make possible such a dream of transformation. Taking a slightly broader perspective, one could ask what this means – for all literature or for climate fiction specifically – in an age of climate crisis and mass extinction. There are numerous examples of literature having a ‘real-life’ impact, from Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. More recently, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring speaks directly to environmental concerns, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach focuses on nuclear power and speaks to devastation which can be ameliorated. The question is whether literature, in this global internet age, can still have the same kind of impact, can still be a force for change and reconsideration of our way of life – a change made in time to preserve human and nonhuman lives. Can novels such as Ian McEwan’s Solar, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, Rawson’s From the Wreck, or Leigh’s The Hunter, to name just a few, push conversation into action? Do dystopian novels like Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or D’Lacey’s Meat, in which nonhuman animals are seemingly extinct, force us to meaningfully consider such a loss, enough to enact change? Literature itself, in reaction to such tangible problems, might also be evolving. Media messages in our post-millennial climate, in which social media is more prevalent and the news cycle is more all-encompassing, even as our attention and media is fragmented and polarized, makes storytelling all the more important in imparting messages, especially those intended to create change. In considering contemporary media, it is possible that the concept of literature can cross traditional, generic boundaries, to allow climate narratives to be activated and promoted in a post-internet age. In addition, authors have increasingly experimented with new ways of portraying nonhuman animals in recent decades, in response to both scientific developments and renewed ideas of species kinship. Questions thus arise about how such artistic innovations and challenges may respond to climate crisis and extinction and how these phenomena may lead authors to explore new artistic avenues in their writing. 

This collection calls for considerations of new interventions by literature in relation to these pressing questions and debates. We are seeking chapters which present cases of literature attempting such intervention, theoretical considerations of the role of literature in these debates, and questions about the efficacy of such a project. We seek diverse voices and perspectives, hoping to see the impact that stories about the issue, and speculating about solutions, can have in shifting debates toward real life concerns. Proposals should be for original works not previously published (including in conference proceedings) and that are not currently under consideration for another edited collection or journal. Proposals of 500 words (or optionally completed papers) and abbreviated CVs listing academic affiliation and publications are due December 31 . If the essay is accepted for the collection, a full draft (5000-7000 words) will be required by May 15th, 2020. We have had positive preliminary discussions with Palgrave about publication, and the editors of the Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature series are looking forward to receiving a full proposal once the abstracts have been selected. Please send all queries and proposals to editors, Sune Borkfelt, Aarhus University engsb@cc.au.dk and Matthias Stephan, Aarhus University engms@cc.au.dk . The editors are happy to discuss ideas prior to the deadline.
 
CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS for the volume Denialism in Environmental and Animal Abuse: Averting Our Gaze , in the Lexington Books series: Environment and Society (series ed. Douglas Vakoch). Editors: Dr. Tomaž Grušovnik (Faculty of Education, University of Primorska, Slovenia); Dr. Karen Lykke Syse (Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway); Dr. Reingard Spannring (Institute for Educational Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria). Despite readily available facts and figures regarding human-caused natural degradation and often overwhelming scientific consensus on issues related to environmental pollution, we are still faced with the disbelief about the existence and extent of anthropogenic impact on the environment. The failure of the so-called Information Deficit Model, according to which public inaction and apathy are generally attributable to lack of relevant information, prompted natural and socials sciences as well as humanities to look for alternative accounts of passivity and inertia in the field of environmental education and awareness-raising. Thus, in the last two decades researchers increasingly focused on the concept of “denialism” as the more suitable explanation of the lack of significant environmental change. Several fields contributed to our understanding of the phenomenon, including anthropology, social psychology, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, ecocriticism, natural science and science communication. The proposed edited volume thus seeks to provide a clear and comprehensive contribution to our understanding of the “environmental denial” with chapters from researchers in natural and social sciences as well as humanities, disclosing the multifaceted appearance of the concept by approaching it from different perspectives. In somewhat similar fashion to environmental disciplines, animal ethics, critical animal studies, and related fields also stumbled on an analogous phenomenon when trying to account for our increasing meat consumption and lack of empathy for the animals slaughtered in the industries despite the efforts of educators, activists, and academia to raise the awareness of the harsh realities of “Animal-Industrial Complex.” The edited volume also aims to present the reader with recent insights into the denial of animal sentience, subjectivity, and agency in range of contexts, providing opportunity of both denialism debates – environmental as well as animal – to mutually shed light onto each other. Chapter proposal submissions are invited from researchers and academics on or before September 30 . Proposals should not exceed 1000 words, presenting main arguments of the chapter and explaining how they fit into the general theme of the volume. Proposals in Word or PDF formats (Times New Roman, 12, 1.5 spacing) should be sent to tomaz.grusovnik@pef.upr.si and reingard.spannring@uibk.ac.at on or before the specified date together with author’s CVs. Full chapters should be around 6000 words in length, following Lexington “ Production Guidelines." All chapters will be subject to peer-reviews. Once the chapters have been reviewed, final chapters will have to be submitted within 2 months from the date they are returned to authors. The volume is planned to be published in late 2020 or early 2021. For more information about the project please write to Tomaž Grušovnik and Reingard Spannring.
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!








Margo DeMello
Human-Animal Studies Director
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