Tell your friends about ASI:
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Human-Animal Studies Newsletter
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Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It's still me here! 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! By this time next month, I will be introducing my replacement to you all!
Margo
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Funding and Job Opportunities
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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
. 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.
Dr. Jeffrey Stevens, director of the Canine Cognition and Human Interaction Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is recruiting a
PhD student to study human-animal interaction
. Projects investigate the effects of interacting with dogs on human cognition and emotion. Previous experience with HAI is preferred. For more information, contact Dr. Stevens at
jstevens5@unl.edu
or see
https://dogcog.unl.edu/
. The deadline for applications is
December 15
.
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All Creatures Great and Small
, supported in part by a grant from the Culture and Animals Foundation, is a new art show featuring five artists who look at our complex relationships with animals. The exhibition
opened October 19 at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and closes November 10. Lisa Pearce, the Director of Meredith College’s Frankie G. Weems Gallery, curated the exhibition, which includes photographs from Shannon Johnstone, Traer Scott, and Jo-Anne McArthur, along with video work from Lee Deigaard and L.A. Watson.
Find out more here!
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Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!
Binfet, J. T., & Hartwig, E. K. (2019).
Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Comprehensive Guide to Credentialing Therapy Dog Teams
. Routledge.
Cassidy, A. (2019).
Vermin, victims and disease: British debates over bovine tuberculosis and badgers
. Palgrave Macmillan.
Chesi, G. M., & Spiegel, F. (2019).
Classical Literature and Posthumanism
. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Donaldson, B. and King, A. (2019).
Feeling Animal Death: Being Host to Ghosts
. Rowman and Littlefield.
Gouyon, J. B.
BBC Wildlife Documentaries in the Age of Attenborough
. Springer Nature.
Hunnicutt, G. (2019).
Gender Violence in Ecofeminist Perspective: Intersections of Animal Oppression, Patriarchy and Domination of the Earth
. Routledge.
Irvine, L. (Ed.). (2019).
We Are Best Friends: Animals in Society
. MDPI.
Lynteris, C. (Ed.)
(2019).
Framing Animals as Epidemic Villains
. Palgrave Macmillan.
Schilp, J. L. (2019).
Dogs in Health Care: Pioneering Animal-Human Partnerships
. McFarland.
Shapshay, S. (2019).
Reconstructing Schopenhauer's Ethics: Hope, Compassion, and Animal Welfare
. Oxford University Press, USA.
Steck, C. (2019).
All God's Animals: A Catholic Theological Framework for Animal Ethics
. Georgetown University Press.
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The latest issue of
Cultural Studies Review
(Volume 25, No. 1) is a special issue on Extinction, in memory of Deborah Bird Rose.
Find it here!
Over recent decades, the multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies has encouraged researchers to move beyond geographical, methodological, and disciplinary boundaries and to understand, explain and analyse human and non-human animals within shared social, cultural, economic, political, and ecological spaces. Despite a growing body of exciting research on human-animal encounters in other parts of the world, studies focusing on the relations between humans and non-humans in the Middle East have remained fragmentary. With a few exceptions, researchers have been slow to embrace the ‘animal turn’ and recognize the significance of human-animal interactions in the Middle East. This special issue of Diyâr – Journal of Turkish, Ottoman, and Middle Eastern Studies aims to address this gap by focusing on papers that consider human-animal relations in the Middle East from the past to the present day. For this themed journal issue, we invite submissions that consider the interplay between human and non-human animals and provide a lens to analyse the Middle East in an innovative, creative, and not exclusively anthropocentric way. We welcome contributions from across disciplines such as (but not limited to) political science, history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, art history, psychology, ecology, bioscience/biomedical research, biology that draw upon diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. The special issue on human-animal encounters in the Middle East is to be published in Spring 2021. Manuscripts can be in German, English and French. A typical manuscript for this special issue should be (60,000 characters, including spaces and footnotes). Please send your abstract of 500 words to
onur.inal@univie.ac.at
by
December 31
. For further details, please visit the journal’s
Guidelines for Authors
.
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.
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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!
Rethinking Canid-Human Relations.
November 21-22, Brock University.
2020 Events
Animaterialities: The Material Culture of Animals (including Humans): Sixteenth Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars.
April 24-25, 2020, University of Delaware.
Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Mass Extinction: The Inaugural Conference of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS).
May 27-29, 2020, University of British Columbia Okanagan.
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Calls for Papers: Conferences
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Feminist Canine Ethnography: Unraveling human-dog relationships from a gender perspective.
January 17, 2020, CEDLA (Roetersstraat 33, Amsterdam). All-day workshop. Keynote speaker: Eva Meijer
Dogs play important and unique roles in the lives of humans, and vice versa. These intimate human-canine bonds date back centuries and are dynamic through time and place. Fascinated by the contemporary phenomenon of dogs as family members in our own intimate circle and interested in the wider discourse of culturenatures or naturecultures (Haraway, 2003), the idea of this workshop arose. By making ‘feminist canine ethnography’ the focus of exploration, this workshop – organized by Reinhilde König (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and Irene Arends (CEDLA, Universiteit van Amsterdam) – departs from the question how gender notions both reflect and shape the ways humans perceive and engage with dogs. ‘Human-animal studies’ and ‘gender studies’ are both well-established fields of scholarship. With this workshop, we aim to bring to the fore the resonances that these two bodies of work have regarding canine-human relationships. Eco-Feminists have already pointed at the universal exploitation of wo/men, nature and non- human animals. And scholars focusing on the classification of species, argue that mechanisms of exclusion and power politics – that are all too familiar to race and gender scholars – are also deeply rooted in the hierarchical relations between human and non- human animals (Meijer, 2017). We believe therefore that it is important to look at the intersectionality of speciesism with gender and invite everyone who is interested in exploring this topic with us.
In this call for presentations we seek submissions on the topic of canine ethnography. We encourage submissions that theorize human- dog relationships from a gender and feminist perspective, and embrace experimental presentations in all forms, theoretical as well as practical. The workshop is structured by roundtable sessions and topics might include (but are not limited to): Companion- and kinship; symbolism and social status; pet- and adoption culture; dog rights and activism; death and dying; funny dogs and social media representations; dog labor and learning; research with dogs; language and discourse regarding dog-human relationships. Deadline for abstract submissions (250 words):
November 15.
Please indicate what form of presentation you prefer. Visitor/auditor registration is required and free of charge. The fee for the (vegan) lunch is €10. Please register by sending your e-mail to: rkonig97@gmail.com and i.s.m.arends@cedla.nl. We encourage local and environmental friendly modes of travel and please contact us if we need to provide for dog shelter. If you have any questions feel free to write us.
Winged Geographies: Birds in Space and Imagination.
April 16-17, 2020,
University of Cambridge.
Keynote speakers will be Rachel Mundy and Dolly Jørgensen.
This workshop will address the question of our evolving spatial relationships with bird life. The presence of birds and their song have long shaped human experience and conceptualisation of the skies, the countryside as well as urban and domestic environments. Birds have been collected, traded and re-contextualised across territories. And their migrations have inspired new kinds of human connections, both psychic and physical. How have birds been part of human efforts to make sense of terrestrial and non-terrestrial places and spaces? Such a question implicates all kinds of actors: gardeners, soldiers, pilots, naturalists, children, writers and philosophers. Aristophanes’ play The Birds saw two frustrated Athenians join with the birds to build a utopian city in the clouds, a new republic where ‘Wisdom, Grace and Love pervade the scene’. Steven Feld’s work with the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea showed that the avian voices heard in the forest defined an entire cultural and spiritual realm. Today, birds increasingly draw attention as indicators of environmental crisis. Amid the age of Anthropocene, are the much-loved imaginative and metaphorical readings of bird life still culturally productive or dangerously retrograde? This workshop aims to explore cultural geographies shaped by the close consideration of birds. International scholars from geography, history, environmental humanities, animal studies, anthropology, ornithology, STS and cultural studies are encouraged to participate, although all disciplines are welcomed. There will be some financial support for travel for PhD students and early career scholars. The aim is for the workshop to facilitate the development of papers for an edited collection or for a special journal edition. Abstracts of 250 words, with a short biography of 100 words, should be submitted by
November 8
here.
Environmental Justice in Multispecies Worlds: Land, Water, Food: An interdisciplinary graduate student conference hosted by the Center for Culture, History, and Environment.
University of Wisconsin–Madison, March 6-8, 2020.
The Center for Culture, History, and Environment invites participants for an interdisciplinary graduate student conference to be held March 6-8, 2020, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land. This conference emerges from a multi-year conversation across departments at UW-Madison concerned with meaning of social and environmental justice in what Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser have called a “world of many worlds.” Inspired by work on Indigenous cosmopolitics, multispecies ethics, feminist and postcolonial studies, and racial capitalism, we seek to understand the following questions:
How have histories of colonial and capitalist exploitation shaped contemporary configurations among humans and other beings? How do class, racial, ethnic, gender, and other politics shape multispecies encounters? How can recognizing multiple forms of life reframe techno-scientific management? What might constitute environmental justice in the pluriverse? How might attention to Indigenous cosmologies and multispecies ethics redefine the politics and structures of environmental justice? Is justice an apt framework for engaging relationships among humans and other-than-humans? We invite participants to join and extend this conversation, bringing methodologies and perspectives from across the humanities and social and natural sciences to explore key themes of climate justice, settler colonialism, decolonization, racial capitalism, sovereignty, food justice, democracy, rights, more-than-human worlds, among others. For more information on submission details and selection criteria, please see our website at
multispeciesjustice.org
. Submissions are due by
November 15
.
'Violence' will take place at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow on 24 and 25 April, with confirmed plenary speakers, Miranda Lowe (Natural History Museum, London), Dinesh Wadiwel (University of Sydney) and Susan Richardson (the BASN poet-in-residence). If you are interested in giving a paper addressing the topic ‘Violence’ 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 10, 2020
. 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.
Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Mass Extinction: The Inaugural Conference of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies (NAACAS).
May 27-29, 2020, University of British Columbia Okanagan.
Keynote speakers include Maneesha Deckha, Lori Gruen, and Claire Jean Kim.
We live in a time of biodiversity loss that has only five precedents in the history of the earth—and, unlike the previous five mass extinction events, this time, an extraordinarily destructive minority of one species, our own, is the cause. Indeed, current rates of anthropogenic biodiversity loss are a clearer indication that we have entered a new geological epoch—what is being called the Anthropocene—than climate change, and climate change is but one of many anthropogenic causes of the current extinction event. Although such catastrophic eliminations in the web of life will inevitably have dire repercussions for humans, mass extinction continues to be a relatively rare subject of media, political, and ethical discussion in comparison to climate change. How should Critical Animal Studies scholars respond to the fact that species are disappearing at nearly unprecedented rates? What can Critical Animal Studies perspectives offer in terms of political and ethical responses to the Sixth Extinction? Does thinking about animal death at the scale of mass biodiversity loss challenge, or lend urgency to, certain approaches to Critical Animal Studies? Are species extinctions any more tragic than the deaths of animals who belong to abundant species, such as the industrially farmed animals and laboratory animals on whom CAS scholars frequently focus? The North American Association for Critical Animal Studies will host its first, biennial meeting at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, in Kelowna, British Columbia (Canada), May 27-29, 2020. Please submit an abstract (maximum 150 words) and a short bio (maximum 100 words) to
naacas2019@gmail.com
by December 2. Questions can be directed to the NAACAS email, Kelly Struthers Montford:
k.sm@ubc.ca
and/or Jodey Castricano:
Jodey.Castricano@ubc.ca
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
. Travel grants will be available for participants.
Animal Advocacy: Insights from the Social Sciences. June 24-26, 2020, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Catherine Amiot, Gordon Hodson, and Tobias Leenaert.
This conference brings together, for the first time, researchers from different fields in the social and behavioral sciences, and animal activists and advocates from around the world.
This conference uniquely bridges the gap between academic researchers and activists/professionals in the field of vegan and animal rights advocacy. We will create a stimulating environment where academics and activists/advocates exchange relevant knowledge, engage in lively debates, share their ideas, and can start collaborations.
The deadline for all submissions is
November 29
.
We invite submissions from researchers and academics to propose Oral Presentations, Symposia, and Poster Presentations. Find more information about the conference and our submission criteria, and the link to the
submission portal
here
. Contact the organisers with any questions at
animaladvocacy@kent.ac.uk
.
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.
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Flann O'Brien & the Nonhuman: Animals, Environments, Machines. Editors: Katherine Ebury, Paul Fagan, John Greaney
Recent years have seen a remarkable rise in studies dedicated to the nonhuman turn in Irish literary and modernist contexts. Yet this proposed collection posits that the writing of Brian O’Nolan (pseud. Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen) constitutes a significant gap in these critical conversations. This is a body of writing acutely suited to the concerns of animal studies, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, object oriented ontology, cyborg theory and posthumanist approaches, but which remains conspicuous by its absence in these debates. This volume of essays addresses and corrects this critical lacuna.
At first blush, readers might think of The Third Policeman’s uncanny landscapes and the 'monstrous exchange of tissue for metal' in the atomic hybridisation of people and bicycles; or of the cast of At Swim-Two-Birds, which includes the bird-man Sweeney, the Pooka MacPhellimey, and a cow who is called as a star witness in the author’s show trial. But this is an oeuvre in which conventional narratives of the human-nonhuman binary are troubled at all turns, whether in the author’s high modernist novels as Flann O’Brien, his newspaper columns, Irish-langauge work, and writing for stage, radio and television as Myles na gCopaleen, or his diverse short stories, non-fiction, and letters under an arsenal of pseudonyms and personae. For instance, in this broader canon we observe the brutal, rain-soaked landscapes, Irish-speaking pigs, and seals of An Béal Bocht; the protagonist’s strange metamorphosis into a train in ‘John Duffy’s Brother’; the columns’ recurrent concern with steam men, writing machines and pataphysical inventions; the donkey's tragedy in the late-career teleplay The Man with Four Legs; or Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green, O'Nolan's stage adaptation of Karel and Josef Čapek’s The Insect Play.
Nonhuman Animals, Climate Crisis and the Role of Literature
. Editor: 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.
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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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