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Human-Animal Studies Newsletter
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Dear Colleague,
Welcome to the current issue of the Animals & Society Institute's Human-Animal Studies e- newsletter. I hope that this issue has information that is of use to you. Please let me know what you'd like to see! For future editions of this newsletter, please send submissions to
[email protected]
.
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Our latest book in the
HAS Book Series
has just arrived! Even more exciting, it’s by a former ASI-WAS fellow, Justyna Wlodarczyk, who participated in the fellowship in 2015, and worked on this project during her tenure with us.
Genealogy of Obedience: Reading North American Dog Training Literature, 1850s-2000s
by Justyna Wlodarczyk. In
Genealogy of Obedience
Justyna Włodarczyk provides a long overdue look at the history of companion dog training methods in North America since the mid-nineteenth century, when the market of popular training handbooks emerged. Włodarczyk argues that changes in the functions and goals of dog training are entangled in bigger cultural discourses; with a particular focus on how animal training has served as a field for playing out anxieties related to race, class and gender in North America. By applying a Foucauldian genealogical perspective, the book shows how changes in training methods correlate with shifts in dominant regimes of power. It traces the rise and fall of obedience as a category for conceptualizing relationships with dogs.
Purchase it here!
We have now completed Season 1 in our
Defining HAS Video series
, with 25 videos ranging from anthropomorphism to zoophilia. We will be working on putting together season 2 for release in 2019. If you have ideas for videos, please email me!
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Wow! There are so many new HAS programs this month!
We are so excited to announce a number of brand new degree programs in Human-Animal Studies, all of which can now be found on our
Degree Programs
page. They are:
University of Colorado Certificate Program in Animals & Society
The Animals and Society certificate builds on a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to the critical examination and evaluation of the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals, whether historical or contemporary, factual, fictional, or symbolic, beneficial or detrimental. The program requirements emphasize scholarship from the social sciences and humanities, but include elective options in the natural sciences. The interdisciplinary approach helps students explore the complexities of animals’ lives, human-animal relationships, ethical and moral concerns about animals, representations of animals and humans, and the significance of animals in human evolution, history, and civilization. Students might also consider pursuing graduate degrees in Human-Animal Studies, Anthrozoology, or related fields.
A
urora University Human-Animal Studies Major
The human-animal studies major prepares students with the academic foundation and hands-on skills needed to enter a variety of expanding animal- related fields. Core coursework provides essential knowledge concerning animal science and human-animal interaction as well as the principles of business and psychology. Studies begin with coursework that examines animal care, the science behind animal-assisted therapy and our role as caretakers to the environment, including relationships with other animals. In your third year, you will choose either the Animal Assisted Therapy Track or the Animal Welfare Track. Both tracks involve additional interdisciplinary courses that engage you by supplementing relevant literature with experiential learning. The human-animal studies program is designed to prepare students for certification in a variety of fields. You can choose to continue on to graduate school or start a career in animal-assisted therapy, animal control, shelter or rescue management, animal welfare investigation, grant writing and management for nonprofits involving animals or a multitude of other professions.
Click here to learn more.
Bircham University Human-Animal Studies Major, Masters, and PhD Program
You may enroll at Bircham International University from anywhere in the world and at any time in the year and earn distance degree programs choosing from over 200 majors of study and with complete compatibility with your professional career.
Specialist - Expert Diploma - Human Animal Studies
Bachelor's Degree - Human Animal Studies
Master's Degree - Human Animal Studies
Doctor Ph.D. Degree - Human Animal Studies
This program examines the complex and multidimensional relationship between humans and animals. Anthrozoology combines approaches from several disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. It analyzes the positive and mutual effects of human-animal relationship and their interactions.
Click here to learn more.
Open University of the Netherlands/IAHAIO Modules in Anthrozoology
Modules in Anthrozoology is an initiative by the Open University of the Netherlands and
IAHAIO
. The modules offer a series of short, theme-based learning blocks for professionals that are already working with animals, and for anyone who is new to the fascinating field of Human Animal Interactions. Each module covers a salient theme in practice and research on human-animal interactions. If you are new to Anthrozoology, or you need to complement your understanding and abilities in this field, these modules are suited for you. You will get a good grounding in key topics that are taught at an academic level. In almost every module, there will be explicit attention for the link between science and practice.
Find out more here.
In other news...
The Kerulos Institute
is offering a three-part webinar series from experts in psychological trauma and trauma-informed care:
- LEARN about trauma, and how to support trauma recovery and avoid re-traumatization
- GAIN powerful insights on how to support Animals healing from trauma
- JOIN a community supporting Animal dignity and freedom
Our third presenter is Dr. Darcia Narvaez, Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her current research explores how early life experience influences societal culture and moral character. She is working intensively on the evolved developmental niche for young children (natural birth, extensive on-demand breastfeeding, constant touch, caregiver responsiveness, free play, multiple adult caregivers and extensive positive social support), early life experience effects on moral development in the US and in China, and the integration of indigenous wisdom.
The
Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education
is inviting academic researchers, nonprofit and other organizations to apply for its first round of grants which will support humane education outreach programs or research into the efficacy of humane education. The foundation is especially interested in receiving proposals for research. The awards, which will range from $5,000 - $10,000 for a one-year grant and up to $15,000 for a two-year grant, will support Latham’s goals of promoting kindness to animals as the first step in encouraging kindness to one another, our country, other nations, and the world. Applications should demonstrate how the proposed research or program achieves those objectives, as depicted in the “steps” illustration on the Latham Foundation website at
https://www.latham.org/grants/general-information/
The deadline for applying is Dec. 28.
The UCLA School of Law Animal Law and Policy Small Grants Program
is seeking small grant proposals for its 2018-2019 funding cycle. The program is happy to receive applications as soon as they are ready, but we will not make any offers of funding until we have reviewed all applications after the funding period closes. This Program is designed to support legal and non-legal empirical scholarship to advance animal law and policy reform. To learn more about the Program, including previously funded projects,
please use this link.
Applications are welcome from any field as long as the potential application of the research to animal law and policy reform is clear. We have a particular interest in fields such as psychology, including moral psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics, and other social sciences. In addition, this year we are especially interested in empirical research applicable to legal reform focused on animals used in experimentation, animals harmed through pest control or “nuisance wildlife management” activities, and dogs at risk of being classified as “dangerous.” Please be aware that we do not fund any type of research on live animals, and we cannot provide funding to scholars based at institutions outside the United States. We are open to collaborative projects with non-U.S.-based scholars, so long as the principal investigator is based at a U.S. institution of higher education throughout the funding period. Applications must be received by December 1, 2018, via email or mail, for the 2018 application cycle.
And finally, we were so sorry to hear about the
death of Mary Midgley
, who was truly a pioneer in the field of human-animal studies. Ken Shapiro notes that Dr. Midgley was kind enough to write an introduction to the very first issue of
Society & Animals
(1993), entitled "The four-leggeds, the two-leggeds, and the winged: An overview of Society and Animals, 1, 1.”
Here is quote from the piece: “The appearance of Society and Animals is one phenomenon among many that witnesses a shift of sensibility, making possible both a greatly extended concern for species other than the human, and a wider intellectual interest in them. It is as if a dark blind... has suddenly flown up.”
Midgley’s
Animals and Why They Matter
(1984) is a seminal work in the field that introduced the concept of “mixed communities,” an idea that has increasing resonance as the field turns more to human-wildlife relationships.
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Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!
Gruen, L. (2018).
Critical Terms for Animal Studies
. University of Chicago.
Horsthemke, K. (2018).
Animal Rights Education
. Springer.
Kessler, B. (2018).
Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature
. Springer.
Kogan, L. R., & Blazina, C. (Eds.). (2018).
Clinician's Guide to Treating Companion Animal Issues: Addressing Human-Animal Interaction
. Academic Press.
Krebber, A. and M. Roescher, eds. (2018).
Animal Biography: Re-framing Animal Lives.
Palgrave-Macmillan.
Linzey, A., & Linzey, C. (Eds.). (2018).
Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism
. Routledge.
Linzey, A., & Linzey, C. (Eds.). (2018).
The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethic
s. Routledge.
Sampson, P. J.
Animal Ethics and the Nonconformist Conscience
. Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomas, N. (2016).
Animal ethics and the autonomous animal self.
Springer.
Trotter, K. S., & Baggerly, J. N. (Eds.). (2018).
Equine-assisted Mental Health Interventions: Harnessing Solutions to Common Problems.
Routledge.
Wlodarczyk, J. (2018).
Genealogy of Obedience: Reading North American Pet Dog Training Literature, 1850s-2000s
.
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Following are some of the latest research articles in the field of human-animal studies:
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Zoos and Aquariums as Welfare Centres: Ethical Dimensions and Global Commitment. Selected Papers from the Detroit Zoological Society’s 4th Global Animal Welfare Congress (May 2017)
- Whither Zoos? An Inescapable Question; Kenneth Shapiro
- Where Are Zoos Going—or Are They Gone? Carl Safina
- My Reflections on Understanding Animal Emotions for Improving the Life of Animals in Zoos; Temple Grandin
- Advances in Applied Zoo Animal Welfare Science; Samantha J. Ward, Sally Sherwen & Fay E. Clark
- Challenges of Compassionate Conservation; Jenny Gray
- A Postzoo Future: Why Welfare Fails Animals in Zoos; Jessica Pierce & Marc Bekoff
- Zoo Animal Welfare: The Human Dimension; Justine Cole & David Fraser
- What Is the Future for Zoos and Aquariums?; Ron Kagan, Stephanie Allard & Scott Carter
Lisa Jean Moore and Rhoda Wilkie have proposed a special issue of
Society & Animals
on the theme The Silent Majority – Invertebrates in Animal Studies, which has been accepted with a projected publication date of the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020. Through our own scholarship and teaching in the field of animal studies, we have been struck by the deeply humanist bias toward vertebrates, in particular mammals, and especially social or domesticated mammals, prevalent in our interdisciplinary field. We would like to push animal studies deliberately and intentionally toward invertebrate species. In so doing we would frame the issue as an intellectual and methodological reckoning that explores what is missing from the field, reasons why this might be so, possible methodological difficulties for scholars in the field of invertebrate animal studies. We would also like to suggest what is reproduced when we replicate a bias toward vertebrate studies – researchers just fall into the "whole vertebrate-invertebrate divide," as stated by a well-known horseshoe crab conservationist. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, invertebrates make up at least 97% of all animal species on earth. Yet most of the scholarship in animal studies have been investigations of vertebrates. This apparent 'bias against animals without backbones' might indicate what one entomologist has called 'institutional vertebratism' (Leather 2009: 413-14). When this bias is combined with the 'doubly other' status of insects this highlights their otherly status to humans andother animals (Loo and Sellbach 2013:13). In a recent study, a respondent who eats insects captured the nebulous/ambiguous status of invertebrate animals when they suggested insects 'are animals, but not animals like the real animals' (House 2016: 55). A special issue that attends to the 'silent majority' of invertebrate animals (cited in Moore 2017: 166) not only affords colleagues a timely opportunity to critically reflect on what is meant by 'animal' in human-animal studies/scholarship, it also provides a counterbalance to the vertebrate/mammalian focus of animal studies to date. We are proposing an issue that foregrounds invertebrate studies and we would attempt to get representation from as many of the six groups of invertebrates as possible— poriferans (sponges), cnidarians (such as sea jellies and corals), echinoderms (such as sea urchins and sea stars), mollusks (such as octopuses, snails, and clams), annelids (worms), and arthropods (such as insects, spiders, and lobsters). Papers are welcomed from across animal studies, including disciplines such as (but not limited to) geography, entomology, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, religious studies, art history, history, science and technology studies, ethology, psychology, behavioral sciences and ecology, bioscience/biomedical research. We would like to receive 150 - 200 word abstracts from interested authors by October 1, 2018. If accepted, full papers will be due by February 1, 2019. After rigorous peer review, publication is expected in late 2019 or early 2020. Please contact Lisa Jean Moore
[email protected]
or Rhoda Wilkie
[email protected]
The Journal
Social Sciences
will be publishing a special issue, with the theme of: "We are Best Friends": Animals in Society, edited by Leslie Irvine. Friendships between humans and non-human animals were once dismissed as sentimental anthropomorphism. After all, who could claim to be friends with a being who did not speak the same language? Animals’ emotions were also questioned. However, decades of research on the emotional and cognitive capacities of animals have made it possible to recognize human-animal friendships as true relationships involving mindedness on both sides. Friendships with animals manifest many of the same characteristics as friendships between humans. Both parties understand the other as having interests, preferences, and other aspects of subjective experience. Both enjoy the shared presence that friendship entails, with its moments of intersubjectivity that comes with knowing another being. Both friends develop ways of communicating, apart from or in addition to spoken language. Having an animal as a best friend often takes the form of companionship understood as the “pet”, but the relationship comes in other forms, too. People who work with animals often characterize their non-human partners as friends. People who work with search-and-rescue dogs, herding dogs, or police dogs develop, and even depend on, the closeness of best friendship. The same holds for equestrians of all sorts, as horses and riders must understand each other’s bodies and movements intimately. In some situations, animals provide the sole source of affection and interaction in people’s lives. Homeless people who live on the streets with animal companions often develop best friendships largely through 24/7 togetherness. In this light, this Special Issue on humans and animals as best friends seeks to explore the various forms these friendships take. Moreover, it aims to shed light on what these friendships mean for society, broadly construed. In short, how do human-animal friendships, and best friendships, in particular, expand the existing interdisciplinary knowledge of the roles of animals in society? The editor encourages researchers from all disciplines and all methodological and theoretical approaches to submit contributions.
Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2019.
Find out more here.
The journal
Religions
will be publishing a special issue on the subject of animals in world religions, to be edited by Dr. Anna Peterson. In recent decades, nonhuman animals have become an important focus of scholarly work in the humanities and social sciences. Anthropologists, literary scholars, historians, philosophers, and others have examined diverse issues including the significance of animals in art and literature, the role of real animals in economics, politics, and war, human moral attitudes toward animals, and a host of other issues. Animals play an important role in almost all religions, including world religions as well as smaller native traditions. Religious studies scholars have addressed topics such as animal sacrifice, animals in sacred stories and myths, symbolic animals such as totems, animal deities, and animals as moral exemplars or villains. The literature has grown in recent years, but it remains small and scattered. This special issue on animals in world religions aims to explore important and interesting contemporary scholarship on the topic. Our scope is deliberately broad – we hope to receive articles that examine many different religious traditions, in different historical periods and geographic regions. We prefer articles that focus on concrete questions and arguments, rather than on broad surveys or overviews. We also prefer studies that look at the place, treatment, and experiences of real animals in religious communities and practices. Studies of symbolic or mythical animals are also welcome, but we are especially interested in those that add a new dimension to the literature, either by employing innovative theoretical and methodological approaches or showcasing unfamiliar topics. In all cases, the goals are to expand scholarly understanding and knowledge of the important place of nonhuman animals in religious thought and practice.The journal issue will provide a valuable complement to the existing literature, by extending the range of religious traditions addressed, by encouraging innovative approaches, and by focusing on studies of real rather than purely symbolic or mythical animals.
Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2019.
Find out more here.
The field of human-animal interactions and the exploration of new ways in which animals can facilitate physical, social, and psychological well-being are growing rapidly. Much of the research, however, has been applied in nature – focusing on assessing a specific issue or testing the effectiveness of interventions. In contrast, far less research has evaluated the basic psychological processes that underlie human-animal interactions. This work is critical in helping inform existing interventions and creating the foundation for the development of novel treatments. Thus, the aim of this special issue on Basic Social and Personality Psychology Research on Human-Animal Interactions, in the
Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin
, is to promote and advance research regarding the psychological roots of human-animal interactions from social and personality perspectives. Papers for this special issue may include (but are not limited to) one or more of the following topics: fundamental relationship processes underlying the human-animal relationship; social cognition and perception related to animals; animal stereotyping and discrimination; understanding the role animals play within the self-concept; attitude formation and attitude change in animal preferences; and contagion of emotions between humans and animals. All submissions focusing on basic research and processes underlying human-animal relations from a social and personality psychology perspective (experimental, correlational) will be considered for this the special issue. Although all types of HAIB submissions will be consider for the special issue, preference will be given for empirical and descriptive investigations. Manuscripts should not exceed 8000 words and should conform to the sixth edition of the APA style manual. Manuscripts should be submitted using the regular HAIB online system, specifying that the submission is for the special issue on basic research on social and personality psychology in human-animal interactions. Papers should be submitted by November 30 with reviews to be completed by June 2019. Please direct any inquiries (e.g., suitability, format, scope, etc.) about this Special Issue to the guest editors: Anthony Coy (
[email protected]
) and Christopher Holden (
[email protected]
).
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
[email protected]
. Thank you!
Graduate Workshop: Knowing Through Animals
: The Animal Turn in History of Science. February 2, 2019, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University. For more information, email
[email protected].
Animal/Language: An Interdisciplinary Conference
. March 21-23, 2019, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Please submit all questions to
[email protected]
.
Animals and the Home. May 1, 2019, Institute of Historical Research, London, UK.
6
th
Conference of the European Association for Critical Animal Studies (EACAS): “Rethinking revolution: Nonhuman animals, antispeciesism and power. May 22-24, 2019, Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
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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British Animal Studies Network Meeting: Emotion
. April 26-27, 2019, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. If you are interested in giving a paper addressing the topic ‘Emotion’ from whatever disciplinary perspective please submit your title, with an abstract of no more than 200 words and a brief biography (also of no more than 200 words). These should be included within your email – i.e. not as attachments. Please send them to
[email protected]
. The deadline for abstracts is January 18, 2019. Presentations will be 20 minutes long and we hope to include work by individuals at different career stages. Sadly we have no money to support travel, accommodation or attendance costs.
Topics covered at this meeting might include (but are not limited to):
· the history of animal emotions
· human and / or animal attachments
· the representation of animal emotion in human art, thought and culture
· the ethical role of animal emotions (real or represented)
The organizers would welcome papers that deal with such issues in contemporary and historical settings, and would especially like to see papers that address these issues from contexts outside the UK, including the Global South. Papers are welcomed from across animal studies, including disciplines such as (but not limited to) geography, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, classical studies, history, science and technology studies, ethology, philosophy, psychology, behavioural sciences and ecology.
Although human exploitation of nonhuman animals is by no means a modern development, it has grown exponentially in the last century. It is under capitalism that human abuse of their power over nonhuman animals has reached a massive scale, with a corresponding massive worsening of its consequences. This includes the suffering of trillions of sentient beings exploited in miserable conditions and killed for trivial purposes in the majority of cases, but also the massive contribution to global warming of industries like agribusiness, as well as the negative impact these practices have on social justice, intra-human violence and human health. The animal liberation movement therefore not only calls for justice and compassion for nonhuman animals, but also confront the results of industrial capitalism and modernity with a radical consciousness-raising claim. This claim is radical because it provides the most accurate condemnation of privilege and the status quo by revealing how inequality does not exist only at the intra-species level, but also at the inter-species level, and that both levels are closely interlinked and thus ought to be addressed jointly. In the spirit of the field of Critical Animal Studies, the aim of this conference is to encourage scholars, students and activists to rethink the revolution that animal liberation theory represents since its inception in the 1970s, a social movement bringing the fight against oppression to its logical conclusion. The conference welcomes proposals from a variety of scholars and disciplines – including critical academics, independent researchers, students and activists – reflecting on the intersecting themes of the conference: power, total liberation and antispeciesism. The conference also welcomes papers focused on any topic critically addressing nonhuman animals’ exploitation from a social science or humanities perspective. The conference encourages the approach of critical animal studies and non-speciesist perspectives on all sorts of discrimination, oppression and abuse towards farmed animals, animals in labs and animals in entertainment, among others, including animals living in the wild.
Please send your abstracts by December 15 to
[email protected]
. All abstracts must be written in English. The conference language is English. Abstracts should include:
- Abstract Title of 30 words maximum
- Abstract Text of 500 words maximum
- A brief biography of the author (150 words maximum) including name, affiliation and contact details
The number of submitted abstracts per author is limited to two. We strongly encourage submissions by women and other socially underrepresented groups.
“Living with Animals 4”
is an Animal Studies conference about all things animal and human-animal interaction, occurring at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). EKU, located in Richmond, Kentucky, just south of Lexington, “The Horse Capital of the World,” began offering the first undergraduate degree in Animal Studies in 2010. We offer a Living with Animals conference every 2 years, and are pleased again to have an international set of speakers. The conference is now over three days,
March 21-23, 2019.
On Sunday, March 24, the day after the conference, we are hoping to have an optional day-long excursion to Salato Wildlife Center, and then to Buffalo Trace Distillery, both in Frankfort, Kentucky, but this is still in the planning stages. The conference centers on our ever-present relationships with animals examined through the arts and humanities, sciences, and applied fields. Consistent with the conference theme, our focus this time around is our diverse relationships with animals. The theme derives from Hal Herzog’s well-known and influential book,
Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals
. We hope presenters will find the relevance of their topic to the theme, but of course any topic related to animals or human-animal interaction is welcome. The
special day-long session,
“Living with Horses”
, a continuing conference in the Living with Animals conference, is co-organized by Gala Argent and Angela Hofstetter. We are also hoping to attract presenters on the theme of
“Living with Insects,”
to draw attention to the precarious nature of so many insects in the world today.
Abstracts of 200 to (approximately) 400 words should be sent to
[email protected]
. The first line of the abstract should be the title of the talk, and the next line(s) should be the authors’ names, positions, affiliations, and email addresses. Following this should be a blank line, followed by the text of the abstract. All should be single spaced. Reference to existing bodies of work might be made. Please also indicate if you would like your presentation to be a
talk
or a
poster
, or if you are offering a
panel
. (We are open to other forms of presentations.) Posters are an excellent way to present some scientific and artistic works, and allow the presenter to engage closely with conference attendees who are most interested by their work. Posters will be available during the buffet lunch on Saturday, 23 March. In addition, provide a one-page CV of your most relevant work and experience. Individual paper presentation time will be 20 minutes, including time for questions. Panels (usually 3 people; maximum time, 1 hour) are welcome. All presentations and panels will be reviewed by the organizers. Abstract submission deadline: December 10, 2018.
The fourth biennial “
Living with Horses
” conference, again organized and co-chaired by Gala Argent and Angela Hofstetter, is scheduled Friday, March 22, 2019. In keeping with the theme of this year’s
Living with Animals
conference,
Living with Horses
will explore the various roles horses play in human lives and the impact of those roles on both humans and horses. We are pleased to announce that equine ethologist, writer and horse trainer, Lucy Rees, will keynote this year. For decades Lucy has studied wild and feral horses in Wales, Spain and Uruguay and used her work in search of the easiest way of dealing with horses, one which is universally applied and is successful. Her 2017 book, Horses in Company, challenges commonly held conceptions of equine dominance hierarchies—something which is not observed in horses living under truly natural conditions—which form the basis of many schools of horsemanship.
Additionally this year, in honor of equine academic, researcher and wild horse advocate, Karen Dalke, we invite submissions to the Karen Dalke Memorial Panel on Wild Horses, with topics covering any aspect of current wild or feral horse research, representation, cultural heritage, and conservation. For the standard Living with Horses presentations, we are particularly interested in ways of thinking about the human-horse interface which consider the ways that lives are intertwined at various levels of scale, with an eye toward how individual and cultural conceptions and understandings of equine subjectivity, or objectivity, play out in these interactions. While it is our hope that presentation topics concern this sub-theme, other topics related to the human-horse interface are welcome.
Please note whether you want your abstract considered for Living with Horses, and/or the Karen Dalke Memorial Panel. Address questions about
Living with Horses
to co-conveners Dr. Gala Argent,
[email protected]
, and Angela Hofstetter,
[email protected]
. Questions about the conference details or submission process go to
[email protected]
. Send your conference submissions to
[email protected]
. For more information on the Living with Animals conference, visit:
https://livingwithanimals.eku.edu
(still under construction). DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: December 10, 2018 (Late submissions will be accepted, although the selection process will start mid-December).
The ‘Animals and the Home’ conference will explore the relationship between animals, humans and the home in diverse forms. The study of the home is an important area in geography, history and anthropology but, as some animal studies scholars have remarked, animals figure in it infrequently. Animal presence is rarely mentioned in studies of idealised homes, domestic practices or family relationships. In recent decades studies of human-animal relationships have also developed and diversified, and a large body of scholarship now explores animal-human histories. While the cultural, economic and social significance of pet animals has been an important theme in this literature, discussions of these animals are sometimes abstract and removed from the everyday spaces and places they inhabited. Less attention has also been paid to the role of utility animals and household pests. This conference aims to bring home and animals together – thinking about the relationship between animals and ideas and emotional understandings of home, but also home as a lived experience. Proposals are invited from scholars working on all periods and geographical areas, bearing in mind that understandings of home often varied at different times and in different places. While the conference focuses on the past, we welcome interest from scholars in all disciplines.
Papers might address (but are not limited to) the following themes:
- Changing discourses or cultural ideas of home and how animals figured in these representations
- Visual representations of animals in the home
- Emotional understandings of home and animals
- Domestic organisation, rituals and routines and the role of animals
- Animals and boundaries, thresholds and movement in the home
- Understandings of roles of animals in the home: utility, pet, pest etc.
- Human-human relationships (family and other) and animal-human relationships
- The impact of animals on space and material culture in the home
- How far we can consider animal agency in the home
The AHRC Pets and Family Life Project invites research proposals for the conference which will be held at the Institute of Historical Research on Wednesday May 1st 2019. Please submit 200-300 word abstracts with a short biography and contact details by January 7 2019 to Elle Larsson at the following email address:
[email protected]
In light of the rising threat of global climate catastrophe, scholars of the nonhuman turn have largely focused their attention on vast environmental processes and forces like global warming and the Anthropocene—on the massive temporal and spatial dimensions of what Timothy Morton calls the “hyperobject.” But the interspecies relations that make up Morton’s hyperobject at the same time always operate on the level of what we call the micro-object—the invisible world of microorganisms and other forms of living matter that permeates every aspect of human and nonhuman life. Our ASLE roundtable seeks to engage these neglected lives that evade human perception, blend object-like into human environments, or exist on the border between life and death—the overlapping worlds of bacteria, fungi, algae, dust, pollen, soil, coral, and plant life that constitute the interspecies social. According to Morton, hyperobjects demand new modes of thinking and living together: We solicit papers in literary and cultural studies that investigate how these lively ‘micro-objects’ implore us to suspend, alter, or reorder our political and cultural systems, habits of thought, and aesthetic or representational modes. Microorganisms like fungi, bacteria, and algae point us to an image of life outside of individuality, life as essentially relational and generative, multiplying: What might a revitalized politics or justice look like when we take on the perspective and the dimensions of these tiny organisms? How does life on the micro-scale compel us to suspend the usual human order, to reconsider our cultural exchanges, or to reorder our (bio)political and ethical systems? At the same time, we seek to uncover in our literary and cultural histories a microbial aesthetics that reckons with the implications of being alive in a wildly diverse network of multispecies relations—relations that operate on multiple scales, diverging temporalities, and according to patterns that cannot be reduced to either harmony or conflict.
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Calls for Proposals: Books
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Rebecca Cassidy (anthropology Goldsmiths, University of London) and Garry Marvin (anthropology, University of Roehampton), have a contract with Routledge to edit a book series titled
Multi-Species Encounters
. There are now many book series out there, exploring the relationships that humans have with other forms of life, each with its particular focus or guiding ethos. This series will also have a guiding academic and intellectual ethos. A key term in the proposed title is ‘ethnographies’. We believe that ethnographic research, long-term, deep, engagement with the lives of those we seek to understand, can produce richly-textured, nuanced, and illuminating interpretive anthropological accounts of those lives. Our interest is to bring those accounts to light in a coherent series. Yes, ‘inter-species’ is a contested term, but we are interested in accounts of how humans experience, engage with, live with, other animals, but also with plants and other living matter. So – our focus will be on ethnographic studies. Such studies will be informed by, and make use of, theoretical perspectives but what will make the series special are accounts of the relationships between humans and other lives that are generated from within particular social and cultural worlds. The editors are now looking for manuscripts that are being worked on, theses that are being transformed, or plans for monographs that are being developed. If you or your colleagues have ideas for a monograph that might fit this series, please get in contact with the editors (
[email protected]
and
[email protected]
) to discuss ideas and possibilities.
Natalie Khazaal and Nuria Almiron would like to invite submissions for an edited volume titled ‘Like an Animal’: Refugees, Animals, and Multiculturalism. The volume explores the unexamined links between human migrants/refugees and nonhumans (refugees in their own right) during global migration crises. The volume’s goal is to open an interdisciplinary and multicultural discussion on the structural, symbolic, and discursive logics behind the human-animal divide as reflected and perpetuated in the case of human migration crises. Contributions will examine any of the intersections between human refugees and nonhuman animals’ interests, treatment, legal status, or media narratives and policies that target them in multicultural states: the EU, MENA, Latin America, and the US. Some of the questions we aim to address include:
How does the shift toward securitization, much exacerbated by the migration crisis, reify the two vulnerable groups?
What do multicultural states risk in denying the suffering of these “huddled masses”?
How does the human-animal construct frame and perpetuate the treatment of the two vulnerable groups?
What are the common ideological roots of the oppression of the two groups?
Why is it useful to think about the intersections between human migrants/refugees and speciesism?
What role does the human-animal divide play in racism, ethnocentrism, classism, etc. as applied to global migration crises?
The volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, journalists, and students as well as a range of governmental and nongovernmental organizations devoted to social justice including animal rights, human rights, and environment activism.. We expect to select 10-12 contributions to seek publication in 2020 with a top international academic publisher (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Sage, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, etc.). The volume will commit to principles of nonviolence and ethical veganism, and use non-speciesist language. The contributions are (provisionally) due by August 31, 2019; the length of each chapter is 7,000-8,000 words (references and notes included). Deadline for submitting 300-400 word abstracts: Nov 20, 2018. Please send abstract submissions to:
[email protected]
Submissions are sought from academics, scholars, research aspirants and animal advocates for the edited collection,
Approaches to the Literary Animal.
The rise and expansion of Animal Studies over the past decades can be seen in the explosion of various articles, journals, books, conferences, organisations, courses all over the academic world. With the publication of Peter Singer’s
Animal Liberation
in 1975 and Tom Regan’s
The Case for Animal Rights
in 1983, there has been a burgeoning interest in nonhuman animals among academics, animal advocates, and the general public. Interested scholars recognise the lack of scholarly attention given to nonhuman animals and to the relationships between human and nonhuman, especially in the light of the pervasiveness of animal representations, symbols, and stories, as well as the actual presence of animals in human societies and cultures. Animals abound in literary and cultural texts, either they are animals-as-constructed or animals-as-such. However, we can approach any literary text from a theoretical lens where the representation of nonhuman animals is the main operative analytic frame. In literature nonhuman animals are given the titular role, they carry symbolic function, they speak human language and so on. But these create problematics and bear the politics of representation. Papers should be within 3000-4000 words following the latest MLA style sheet and must have abstract of 250 words with keywords. The papers should accompany relevant endnotes, references and authors’ bio-note. They will be scrutinised and reviewed thoroughly and checked for potential unethical practices. Selected papers will be collected in a book (with ISBN) to be published by a reputed publisher. Submission Deadline: November 30.
Submit to: [email protected].
Troy Jollimore is putting together an anthology of original essays on loyalty. He wants like to include something about animals, species loyalty, a critique of speciesism in terms of loyalty -- anything along those lines. If you are interested, please contact him at
[email protected]
.
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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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