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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! This month, we've got a new, hopefully easier-to-read template, and I've also moved the list of new research and new books onto our website, in an attempt to shorten this newsletter. Please let me know if you like the changes, or would rather go back to the old version! For future editions of this newsletter, please send submissions to margo@animalsandsociety.org.
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We are all still on a high from the amazing Summer Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! Jane Desmond, Ken Shapiro, Kim Marra and myself were so thrilled with the work that the Institute participants did, and with their level of scholarship, and are already looking forward to 2019! If you’d like to see some pictures of this year’s activities,
you can find them here!
Also, a shout out to Seven Mattes, who participated in the first year of the Institute, in 2017, who just finished her dissertation! Congrats, Dr. Mattes!
Mattes, S. M. (2018).
Animals Left Behind: Multispecies Vulnerability in Post-3-11 Japan
(Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University).
Have you seen our new document, Key Readings in Human-Animal Studies? We created this document for the Summer Institute participants, to give them an overview of some of the key readings in the field, by discipline, and thought it might be useful for others as well.
You can find it here.
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The School of Social Work at Colorado State University invites applications for up to two faculty positions at the assistant (tenure-track) rank. The 9-month tenure/tenure-track appointment will begin January 2019 or August 2019. Applicants are sought with an expertise in behavioral health (mental health, alcohol, and drug prevention/treatment), human-animal interventions, aging, health/well-being, child welfare, or social justice which enhance the existing research strengths in our School, College, and University. However, applicants with other research expertise are invited to apply. Candidates are required to have a doctoral degree in social work or a related discipline, demonstrated ability to conduct impactful scholarly research and publish in peer-reviewed venues, an active and well-articulated research agenda coupled with interest and ability to secure external grant funding, ability to teach at the BSW, MSW, and/or
PhD levels, and to advise MSW research projects and/or doctoral dissertations. Applicants should understand and be able to facilitate conversations around privilege, oppression, and intersecting social identities. While an MSW is not required to apply, applicants must be aware that to teach practice classes, you must have a MSW degree from an accredited social work program and a minimum of two (2) years post-master’s professional practice experience.
The Messerli Research Institute is seeking a three-year PhD student/University assistant in animal ethics. Messerli is located at the campus of the University of Veterinary Medicine
Vienna and is also part of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna. It is entirely dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of the human-animal relationship and consists of a Unit of Comparative Cognition, a Unit of Comparative Medicine, and a Unit of Ethics and Human-Animal Studies. The PhD candidate will be a member of the Unit of Ethics and Human-Animal Studies and work in the research group on Animal Ethics and Animal Cognition of this unit. The position will be funded by the FWF Stand-alone project ‘Morality in animals: What it means and why it matters’ (PI: Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg) and the candidate is expected to develop her research in a way that incorporates the goals of this project.
This project firstly aims to specify the character and cognitive requirements of moral emotions in animals. Whereas the current debate mostly concentrates on empathy as a moral emotion and on morally good behavior, the members of this project will engage in an analysis of other moral emotions, such as patience, compassion, guilt, and grief and, furthermore, consider negative moral emotions, such as cruelty, jealousy, schadenfreude, and callousness. Secondly, the project will deal with whether the attribution of morality to animals comes with ethical implications – a dimension that scholars in the debate have widely neglected. The PhD candidate is expected to develop her research project as part of this second goal. The project will analyze the ethical consequences of being a moral subject from the perspective of three important theories in animal ethics: the capabilities approach, the integrity approach, and the rights approach. This project aims to adopt an interdisciplinary and empirically-informed methodology. To accomplish this goal, the latest empirical results will be discussed in monthly lab meetings with members of the other units at the Messerli Research Institute, and two international and interdisciplinary conferences will be held as part of the project. Please submit applications via e-mail to
judith.benz-schwarzburg@vetmeduni.ac.at
at the latest on August 31.
CAWSEL (
Courses on Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law)
will be returning to St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, from the 17
th
to the 19
th
of September 2018. Course 3, part of CAWSEL 2018, will be looking at ethics, laboratory animal welfare, utility animals and the veterinary surgeon’s role in animal welfare.
CAWSEL
is a professionally developed range of courses providing attendees with a broad appreciation of animal welfare
science, ethics and law
.
With a legacy spanning over two decades, CAWSEL is comprised of four Courses aimed at veterinarians, veterinary nurses, animal welfare researchers, animal science researchers, students and animal charity workers or campaigners. Historically, the courses have attracted students from over 25 countries world-wide. Principles of Ethics in Relation to Animal Use will cover topics such as:
·
Ethics and welfare, including public attitudes to welfare, cultural and religious perspectives and the areas of conflict between human and animal interests;
·
The ethics in use of laboratory animals such as housing and welfare, stress associated with experimentation and the requirements of regulatory authorities;
·
Welfare concerns for utility animals used in racing and hunting with examples drawn from working dogs, guide dogs and hearing dogs, show animals and their breeding;
·
The Veterinary Surgeon’s role in animal welfare, focusing on the State Veterinary Service versus private practice and interactions with animal welfare organisations.
For more information on this course, contact Madalina Marincas at Opening Doors & Venues, the appointed organisers: Tel: +44 (0) 1562 731788; Email:
CAWSEL@opening-doors.org.uk
The UCLA School of Law Animal Law and Policy Small Grants Program (“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. Awards will be announced by January 15, 2019.
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Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!
Carr, N., & Broom, D. M. (2018).
Tourism and Animal Welfare
. CABI. Jalongo, M. R. Children, Dogs and Education.
Benvegnù, D. (2018).
Animals and Animality in Primo Levi’s Work
. Palgrave.
Adams, C.J. (2018).
Burger (Object Lessons).
Bloomsbury.
Moore, L.J. (2018).
Catch and Release: The Enduring Yet Vulnerable Horseshoe Crab
. NYU Press.
Sigman, M. (2018).
Entangled: People and Ecological Change in Alaska's Kachemak Bay
. University of Alaska Press.
Kasperbauer, T. J. (2017).
Subhuman: The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes to Animals
. Oxford University Press.
Springer, S., & Grimm, H. (Eds.). (2018).
Professionals in food chains
. Wageningen Academic Publishers.
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Following are some of the latest research articles in the field of human-animal studies:
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Volume 26, No. 2, Tracking the Human–Wildlife–Conservation Nexus Across the Human–Animal Studies (HAS), was edited by animal geographers Monica Ogra (Gettysburg College) and Julie Urbanik (the Coordinates Society), and includes the following articles:
- Tracking the Human–Wildlife–Conservation Nexus Across the Human–Animal Studies (HAS) Landscape, by Monica Ogra and Julie Urbani
- Lupine Becomings—Tracking and Assembling Romanian Wolves through Multi-Sensory Fieldwork, by Kieran O’Mahony; Andrea Corradini and Andrea Gazzola
- Birding, Citizen Science, and Wildlife Conservation in Sociological Perspective, by Elizabeth Cherry
- Human-Tiger (Re)Negotiations, by Kalli F. Doubleday
- Fogones de Fauna: An Experience of Participatory Monitoring of Wildlife in Rural Uruguay, by Lucía Bergós; Florencia Grattarola; Juan Manuel Barreneche; Daniel Hernández and Solana González
- Urban Wildlife Organizations and the Institutional Entanglements of Conservation’s Urban Turn, by Erin Luther
- Outlaws or Protected? DNA, Hybrids, and Biopolitics in a Finnish Wolf-Poaching Case, by Taru Peltola and Jari Heikkilä
- Bringing Ethics to Wild Lives: Shaping Public Policy for Barred and Northern Spotted Owls, by William S. Lynn
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.
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.
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 2018 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!
CAWSEL.
September 9-21, St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge
Animal/Language: An Interdisciplinary Conference
. March 21-23, 2019, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Please submit all questions to
animallanguage2019@gmail.com
.
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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Animal/Language: An Interdisciplinary Conference.
Held in conjunction with the art exhibition “Assembling Animal Communication."
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 21-23 March 2019.
Animals and language have a complicated relationship with one another in human understanding. Every period of history evinces a fascination with the diverse modes of communicative exchange and possibilities of linguistic community that exist both within and between species. Recent critics of anthropocentrism are far from the first to question the supposed muteness of the “dumb animal” and its ontological and ethical ramifications. Various cultures have historically attributed language to animals, and we have developed an increasingly sophisticated scientific understanding of the complex non-verbal communicative systems that animals use among themselves. New research complements millennia of
human-animal communication in the contexts of work, play, and domestic life. Some people have extensive experience with real, live animals. Some primarily encounter animals as products of the food industry. Some focus on animal representations in text or image, or deploy the abstract figure of “the animal” as limit or counterpart of the human. These interactions condition different ways of “thinking with animals,” including: using them in and
as language or in experimentation, recruiting them as symbols and metaphors, incorporating them into idiomatic expressions, projecting moral values onto them, and ventriloquizing them for purposes of cultural critique. A vast archive of literary, artistic, philosophical, historical, religious, and scientific explorations testifies that the boundaries and complementarities relating animals and language have always captured the human imagination.
Animal/Language
aims to create an interdisciplinary dialogue on the relationship between “animals” and “language” that considers both what connects and what separates these two key
terms.
The conference hopes to generate new scientific inquires and creative synergies by initiating conversation and exchange among scholars in the arts, humanities, natural
sciences, and social sciences.
Proposal Submission Deadline: September 30, 2018
Proposals for 20-minute papers should be no more than 300 words long and include 3-5 keywords identifying your discipline and topic(s). All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously;
please provide author name(s) and affiliations in your submission email, but omit them from
your abstract itself. Please submit all proposals (in .docx or .pdf form) and questions to animallanguage2019@gmail.com.
Animal Rights and Animal Politics in Asia: International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS 11). University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands, 16-19 July 2019.
At the forthcoming International Convention of Asian Scholars there will be an entire day dedicated to Animal Rights and Animal Politics in Asia (ARAPA). We are holding four distinct sessions for participants that will cover didactic (head-based) topics such as philosophy, politics and law, and participatory (heart-based) topics such as activism and mentoring.
Please send an abstract of up to 400 words and a bio of up to 250 words. Please include any links to personal or professional web pages (if you have them).
Send your submissions to Dr Tamasin Ramsay
tamasin.ramsay.ajp@gmail.com
with “ICAS 2019” and the session you are submitting for in the subject line.
Final date for submissions is September 1.
We will send you further information will be given upon your acceptance. Meanwhile please visit these official websites of the conference and the institute to find out more.
*The ICAS deadline is 10
th
October if you wish to submit an independent paper directly to ICAS. However, to be part of our ‘Animal Rights Animal Politics in Asia’ day, please submit to the above email address before September 1.
IAHAIO would like to invite researchers, practitioners and anyone involved in the delivery of AAI programmes to submit an Abstract for presentation of a poster at the Symposium.
To submit an Abstract, please click
here
. The deadline for Abstract submissions is August 13.
All abstracts will be reviewed by an independent panel and applicants will be notified of the outcome by Monday 17 September. If you have any queries, please contact
admin@iahaio.org
Decolonizing Animals: AASA 2019, June 30
th
— July 3
rd
2019,
Ō
tautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
The next biennial conference of the Australasian Animal Studies Association will be held in
Ō
tautahi / Christchurch, Aotearoa / New Zealand – a city and a country that embody the impacts of colonialism on human and nonhuman animals alike. The conference committee calls for papers that address the themes below in ways that are scholarly, creative, or activist – or all three:
· Animals and indigeneity
· Indigenous approaches to human-animal studies
· Animals in relation to migration and immigration; dislocation and exile; borders, refugees, and camps; asylum and sanctuary
· Colonial histories of animals or human-animal relations
· Decolonial politics and animals or human-animal relations
· Ecological imperialism
· Epistemological, representational, conceptual colonization and decolonization of animals in film, literature, the arts, digital media
· Violence, war, genocide, invasiveness, domination in human-animal relations
· Human-horse relationships across cultures
· Colonization, decolonization, animals, and the environmental crisis
· Indigeneity and veg*nism
· Critiques of animal consumption and food practices
· Animals and cultural conflict and exchange
· Decolonizing the Anthropocene
· Decolonizing carnism
· Decolonizing agriculture, environmental management, ‘pest’ control, animal breeding, ‘pet’-keeping, bloodsports, animal entertainment, or other human-animal practices
· Critiques of ethnocentric, imperialist, anthropocentric, or universalist paradigms for understanding animals
· Human-animal studies and decolonial studies
· Intersections between decolonial perspectives on animals and human-animal relations with those emerging from critical race studies; feminist, gender, queer, and trans studies; Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches; disability studies; etc.
Please send abstracts in the form of an email attachment (MS Word or compatible – not PDF please) containing your name; your institutional affiliation (if appropriate); your proposed paper title and abstract (approximately 350 words); a brief autobiography (no more than 150 words); four keywords identifying the main themes of your paper.
to Associate Professor Annie Potts, AASA 2019 Conference Convenor, at
annie.potts@canterbury.ac.nz
. Closing date for abstracts: September 30.
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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.
Proposals for articles on topics relevant to this collective volume may include, but are not limited to:
Theoretical Background
• HAS or CAS or Anthrozoology • Animals and Animality Studies • Animal Studies and Ecocriticism • Animal ethics and rights • Darwinism • Posthumanism • Womanimalia (woman = animal) • Animal alterity • Animal Ontology • Postcolonial Animal • Domesticated animal • Meat eating, fishing and farming
Textual Readings
Contributors have the liberty to choose literary texts for their case study, but the papers must theorise the significant presence of nonhuman animals in the selected texts. Photo-essays are also welcome.
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: October 31.
Submit to: studiesanimal@gmail.com
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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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