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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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The Animals & Society Institute and the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invite applications for the third annual Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute program for advanced graduate students and early career scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies. This interdisciplinary program, inaugurated in 2017, is focused on graduate students and those in the first few years post-Ph.D. or other terminal degrees like M.F.A., M.S.W., D.V.M., or J.D., and will enable 20-30 participants to work on their dissertations or publications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted by the Center for Advanced Study, for one intensive week. The 2019 Institute will take place from July 14-21, 2019, inclusive.
Find out more here.
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Funding and Job Opportunities
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The Animal Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School is inviting applications for a full-time Clinical Instructor. The new Animal Law & Policy Clinic is part of the existing Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program, whose policy work has been cited in U.S. Congressional hearings and covered in major media outlets. The Clinic will benefit from and be able to take advantage of the experience and reputation of the Program and its personnel, and the Clinic and Program will work collaboratively toward shared goals. The Clinic will undertake work in the area of animal law and policy, both domestically and internationally. It will focus on high impact opportunities to improve the treatment of animals, which might include litigation, policy analysis, or applied academic research. During the academic year, the Clinical Instructor will supervise and assess the work of up to eight Harvard Law School students per semester, which will involve meeting regularly with students to discuss case strategy; reviewing and editing students’ written work; accompanying students to any court, legislative or administrative hearings; and providing regular feedback, both written and oral, on their performance. The Clinical Instructor will meet regularly with other teaching staff to share information and strategies, and will be expected to collaborate on and participate in initiatives of the entire Clinical Program, including orientation, trainings, and retreats.
Find out more here.
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL invites applications for the full-time position of Visiting Clinical Professor or Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor, depending on level of experience, in the new Animal Law & Policy Clinic. This a term appointment for either one or two years, depending on the candidate’s preference. A successful visit will lead to consideration for a clinical faculty position. The Visiting Clinical Professor or Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor and Clinical Instructor will work in consultation with the Faculty Director of the Animal Law & Policy Program to determine the projects that the Clinic will undertake and strategies for their execution. Through a separate search process, we are also seeking to make an appointment of a Clinical Instructor for the Clinic. Responsibilities will include supervision of the Clinical Instructor; development of proposals for clients, cases, and policy projects; the instruction of students; supervision of and responsibility for student casework; client communication; clinic administration; case management; and record keeping. Find out more here:
The
Department of Philosophy
at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada invites applications for a
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Animal Studies
. This is a one-year non-renewable 12-month fellowship, supporting a researcher with demonstrated expertise in animal ethics, law and public policy. While we interpret animal ethics, law and public policy broadly, and welcome applications from various disciplines that study human-animal relations including political science, law, philosophy, sociology, geography, and environmental studies, we are particularly interested in research that critically examines the moral, legal and political dimensions of how human-animal relations are governed. The recipient of the Fellowship is expected to be actively involved in the day-to-day life of the Department, to teach a University course in animal ethics, to participate in the activities of our animal studies research group (
http://animalpolitics.queensu.ca/
), and to help organize a workshop or conference in the field. The Fellow will work under the supervision of Prof. Will Kymlicka. The 2019-20 fellowship will start on July 1, 2019. Applicants must have submitted their doctoral dissertation by that date, and must be within five years of having received their doctorate. The salary for the postdoctoral fellowship will be $40,000, which includes remuneration for teaching a half-course in animal ethics or a cognate subject. Applications are due by
February 1
. For more information, visit
https://apply.interfolio.com/58289
or contact Prof. Kymlicka (
[email protected]
).
Harvard Law School's
Animal Law & Policy Program
is now accepting
Visiting Fellow
applications for the 2019-20 Academic Year. The deadline to submit applications is
February 15
. The Animal Law & Policy Visiting Fellowships provide opportunities for outstanding scholars from a range of disciplines and legal practitioners to spend from three months to one academic year undertaking research, writing, and scholarly engagement on academic projects in the field of animal law and policy. Fellows devote their time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their research agendas and to contributing to the community of the Animal Law & Policy Program. Fellows will be expected to participate in Program activities, contribute to the intellectual life of the Program, and are encouraged to organize one or more academic events related to their fellowship project. Fellows also have the opportunity to mentor students and contribute to the Animal Law & Policy Program’s broader presence. Fellows have access to a wide range of resources offered by Harvard University, are provided office space at HLS, and receive a monthly stipend in an amount consistent with other Fellowship programs at HLS. We welcome applicants with a J.D., LL.M., S.J.D., Ph.D. or other comparable degree. We also welcome applicants from all disciplinary backgrounds, including the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, provided that the applicant’s research agenda relates to animal law and policy. Applicants will be evaluated by the quality and significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic and professional achievement. For more information on Animal Law & Policy Visiting Fellowships and the application process, click
here
.
The
Culture & Animals Foundation
(CAF) is now accepting applications for our 2019 grants. We fund academic and artistic projects that raise public awareness about animals, awarding grants in three categories: Research (scholarly projects about animal advocacy and its cultural roots and impact); Creativity (original work by artists and thinkers that expresses positive concern for animals); and Performance (public performances and exhibitions to raise awareness of animal advocacy). Grant applications are due on or before
January 31
. Past recipients are welcome to apply again for funding of a new endeavor or continued development of a previously funded project, although priority will be given to new grantees. You can find the grant application
here
. (Please make sure to read the instructions carefully.) Past grantees can be found
here
. If you have any questions, check out our
FAQs
or email us at
[email protected]
.
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The deadline for applying to be a member of the Fall 2019 entering class of Anthrozoology Master's students at Canisius College is February 1. Information about the program, including a description of courses offered and the faculty,
can be found here
.
We conduct the program in a modified online format, with students and faculty coming together at the beginning of each 15-week semester for a four-day series of meetings and workshops. During these four days, classes meet, and students attend professional development workshops, hear from a guest speaker, and get to know faculty and fellow students. The Master's program at Canisius College provides students an opportunity to network and learn alongside prominent members of the field. In addition to learning from leaders in Anthrozoology, our students take an active role in advancing the field by presenting their work at national and international conferences and publishing their scholarship in academic journals. Please contact Dr. Christy Hoffman (
hoffmanc@
canisius
.edu
) if you would like more information about the program.
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Following are some of the books coming out that we are excited about!
Baker, T. (2019).
Writing Animals: Language, Suffering, and Animality in Twenty-First-Century Fiction
. Springer.
Behie, A. M., Teichroeb, J. A., & Malone, N. (Eds.). (2019).
Primate Research and Conservation in the Anthropocene
(Vol. 82). Cambridge University Press.
Krebber, A., & Roscher, M. (Eds.) (2018).
Animal Biographies: Reframing Animal Lives
. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Lloro-Bidart, T. and Banschbach, V. eds. (2019).
Animals in Environmental Education
. Palgrave Macmillan.
Middelhoff, F., S. Schönbeck, R. Borgards, and C. Gersdorf, eds. (2019).
Texts, Animals, Environments: Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics
. Rombach Druck.
Pettorelli, N., Durant, S. M., & du Toit, J. T. (Eds.). (2019).
Rewilding
. Cambridge University Press.
Specht, J. (2019).
Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America
(Vol. 3). Princeton University Press.
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Following are some of the latest research articles in the field of human-animal studies:
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The study of human-animal relationships is now an established multi-disciplinary field. In addition, growing political debates over humanity’s troubled relationship with animals spanning the wild-domestic spectrum makes nonhuman animals a matter of pressing environmental, social, and global concern. As our connection with animals is increasingly on the public agenda, it is timely for the field to contribute more directly to the development of an “animal politics” by increasing the use of academic research as a source of and support for policy and practical consideration. To that end,
Society & Animals (S&A)
is launching a new section of the journal, “Political Animals: Ethics, Policy, and Practice.”
Society & Animals
is an interdisciplinary and international journal of first choice for those framing their work as anthrozoology, animal studies, human-animal studies, or critical animal studies. It is also of direct interest to those in allied disciplines with a strong interest in human-animal relationships such as anthropology, conservation, cultural studies, development studies, environmental studies, geography, history, literary studies, political science, psychology, philosophy, and sustainability studies. We aim to make this section rigorous, dialogic, and accessible. Articles may focus on case studies, empirical findings, theoretical analysis, or conceptual innovations. Short articles and commentary on already published papers in the literature and responses to current events or enduring world conditions are also welcome. Because of our interdisciplinary readership, we ask authors to write with both clarity and accessibility in mind. Following Aristotle’s assertion that politics and policy are ethics writ large, we are particularly interested in discussion of the ethical and prudential norms that are institutionalized in governance, politics, and culture. With this intersection in mind, we encourage contributors to submit articles that directly address issues of animal ethics and/or politics with policy implications. (Please see the journal’s “Author Guidelines” for more information about submission requirements). In announcing this new section, we want to make clear that we take an open and inclusive approach to diverse theories, methods, and topics. We also welcome a full array of ethical, social, and political perspectives. To make all such contributions concrete and relevant, we do ask that authors give special attention to drawing out the practical implications of their work. In addition, human-animal relationships are complex interactions between people, animals, and nature. These interactions are both social and ecological, individual and collective, and range from local to global scales. We therefore encourage articles and shorter contributions that examine “political animals” from one or more of these points of view. William S. Lynn (Marsh Institute, Clark University) is the managing editor for this section. He is joined in this task by Kristin L. Stewart (Anthrozoology, Canisius College), Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila (Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Stephen Vrla (Sociology & Education, Michigan State University) as associate editors, as well as by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Kenneth Shapiro (Animals & Society Institute). Please direct questions about the appropriateness of a paper for the new section to [email protected].
In recent years, critical reflections on animality have troubled the concept and self-fashioning of the ‘human’. By paying increasing attention to the borderlands between humans and animals, numerous critics have interrogated how apparatuses of anthropocentrism produce and police a borderland in which certain humans are dehumanized, animalized, or never seen as fully human, while certain nonhumans are interpellated into subjectivity, sentience, or even legal personhood. Furthermore, scholars have argued that the logic of species, or ‘speciation’, is conjoined with logics of coloniality, race, gender, and dis/ability. They suggest that a narrow but mutable concept of ‘humanity’ defines itself against innumerable human and nonhuman animal others. But at the same time, critics insist that the ‘human’ has indeed never been properly or exclusively human. They contend that one of the ways to begin undoing the anthropocentric hierarchizing of life is to affirm – or, to quote Walter Benjamin, recognise – that there is nothing other than a borderland joining and separating humans and other animals. How do we think these two ideas together? How do we deconstruct this borderland without collapsing difference? And to what extent is the ‘borderland’ a useful space and metaphor for theorising the ongoing production of humanimal differences? This
special issue of parallax
sets out to theorise and reflect on the ‘animal borderlands’ of speciation. We invite border-crossing essays which navigate and address these animal borderlands. Potential contributors are invited to submit abstracts of 400 words to the guest editor, Dominic O’Key (
[email protected]
), by January 28th 2019. Final essays must be submitted by August 30 and should not exceed 7000 words including references. All essays are subject to peer-review. The issue will be published in spring/summer 2020. For more information, see
here
.
The journal
Animals
is seeking submissions for a number of special upcoming issues:
The latest issue of the
Animal Studies Journal
is now available, on Dairy, and includes the following articles:
The editors are organizing a Special Issue on the psycho-social impact of human-animal interactions (HAIs) on health in the
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
.
The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. This Special Issue, guest edited by Aubrey Fine, is open to any subject area related to the psycho-social benefits of human-animal interactions. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities. Manuscripts should be submitted online at
www.mdpi.com
by
registering
and
logging in to this website
. Once you are registered,
click here to go to the submission form
. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website. Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. Please visit the
Instructions for Authors
page before submitting a manuscript. The
Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this
open access
journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service
prior to publication or during author revisions. Deadline for manuscript submissions:
September 30.
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.
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.
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, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University. For more information, email
[email protected].
Animal/Language: An Interdisciplinary Conference
. March 21-23, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Please submit all questions to
[email protected]
.
Animal Rights and Animal Politics in Asia: International Convention of Asian Scholars
(ICAS 11). July 16-19, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Calls for Papers: Conferences
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Sex and Nature: 1800-2018
. University of Exeter, June 10-11.
Since 2016 the
Ecosexual Bathhouse
art venue has been touring the world. Designed by the Pony Express artist collective, this roving multi-chamber venue aims to explore ecological fantasies: visitors can visit a pollination gallery, a composting glory hole, and a honey bee swarm. Activating desire and channelling erotic expression towards the elements of water, earth, air and fire, the project aims to nurture a visceral connection to nonhuman animals, plants, minerals, and inanimate materials. The Ecosexual Bathhouse is but one of a number of exemplary case studies that disrupt and display the entangled categories of “sex” and “nature.” This conference aims to interrogate and investigate diverse moments and sites where sex and nature, along with their practices, aesthetics, methodologies, and conceptual histories, are becoming visible in new and unexpected contexts, both in the present and the past, from sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s interest in ‘intersex butterflies’ in the 1920s to the botanical sex scene of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007). Historically, the relationship between sex and nature has long been contested. Ideas of nature and the natural have often been employed to secure and essentialise heteronormative binaries of sex, gender and sexuality. Much feminist and queer scholarship has been dedicated to revealing and challenging such uses of the natural. At the same time, the relationship between nature, the natural and sex has been interpreted to support a variety of causes: in the late nineteenth century, for example, feminists took on the cause of anti-vivisection because they saw it as indicative of a common objectification of women and animals. From Darwin and Linnaeus to Krafft-Ebing and Kinsey, categories of sex and sexuality were introduced into concepts of nature and the natural world. This categorisation of sex and nature led to highly contested and politicised debates among their contemporaries. More recently, the relationship between sex and nature has opened up debates in ecofeminism (Greta Gaard, Val Plumwood), material feminism (Elizabeth Wilson, Stacey Alaimo) and Anthropocene feminism (Claire Colebrook) that seek to rethink the relationship between sex and nature. Instead of rejecting or challenging the idea of the natural, such scholarship has demonstrated the queer and feminist potential of nature. Ground-breaking treatments of nature and sex have led to robust theorizations of queer ecologies (Catriona Sandilands, Astrida Neimanis), natural histories of sexuality (Greta LaFleur) and new kinship forms through reproductive technologies (Sarah Franklin), to name but a few. The conference welcomes scholars from all disciplines drawing on a broad range of methodologies and focusing broadly on the period since 1800. Abstracts of 350 words, along with a 50-word bio, sent in word format or copied into email body, should be sent to Dr Ina Linge (
[email protected]
) and Dr Sarah Bezan (
[email protected]
) by 30 January. Confirmed participants will be notified by early February. Early career scholars and post-graduate researchers are expressly encouraged to submit abstracts. Travel bursaries will be offered to two postgraduate participants in exchange for live-tweeting during the conference and written reports following the conference. Please let us know in your abstract submission if you would like to be considered for these. We are keen to publish a selection of papers from the conference as an edited volume or special journal issue. Further plans will be discussed with delegates at the conference.
Arts of Coexistence - Care and Survival in the Sixth Extinction
. Workshop of the Working Group HOLB (Humans and Other Living Beings) of the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA). May 2-3, Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH), University of Oslo (UiO), Norway
Recognising that our planet has entered a time of immense ecological devastation, this workshop invites papers that work creatively with the concept of care. The workshop explores diverse forms of care across difference that people develop (or fail to develop) in order to save species from disappearance. How are ways of coexistence threatened, erased, but also still maintained in the age of the sixth extinction? Specifically, we are interested in work that conceptualises and explores skills, practices and ideas of care in multispecies, interspecies and more-than-human contexts. In addition, we invite research that reaches beyond ideas such as species and organic life, to encompass also practices of care for land and landscapes, for ecosystems, for machines, infrastructure, the dead, spirits, concepts, history and the past, the future, for the world itself. Papers may address topics such as intervention, sustainment, maintenance, repair, collaboration, remediation, restoration or survival. What forms of care are the chaos and violence of the present moment calling forth? What are their limits? What are their risks and dangers, their potential for destruction? How does care travel, how may it be transposed to novel objects, settings and domains? How is care undone, destroyed, eradicated – and how can it be restored? How can we as researchers root our practice, and our commitments, in forms of care that do justice to the future? What are the possibilities of more-than-human care? The disciplinary scope of the workshop is open, encompassing anthropology as well as cognate disciplines such as human geography, cultural studies, history of science, science and technology studies, sociology, media studies, archaeology and so on. We also welcome artists and other practitioners whose work engages with the topics of the workshop, and who are interested in contributing through performance, installations, photography etc. If you are interested in participating, please send a title and abstract (500 words) to is [email protected] by 28 February 2019. Draft papers must be pre-circulated to participants by 15 April. There may be some limited funding available for EASA members for travel and accommodation costs, please let us know if you require this.
Beastly Modernisms
,
September 12-13, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
If modernism heralded a moment of socio-political, cultural and aesthetic transformation, it also instigated a refashioning of how we think about, encounter, and live with animals. Beasts abound in modernism. Virginia Woolf’s spaniel, T.S. Eliot’s cats, James Joyce’s earwig, D.H. Lawrence’s snake, Samuel Beckett’s lobster, and Djuna Barnes’s lioness all present prominent examples of where animals and animality are at the forefront of modernist innovation. At stake in such beastly figurations are not just matters of species relations, but questions of human animality and broader ideas of social relations, culture, sex, gender, capitalism, and religion. Modernism’s interest in the figure of the animal speaks to the immense changes in animal life in the early twentieth century, a period where the reverberations of Darwinian theory were being felt in the new life sciences, as well as emergent social theories that employed discourses of species, and developing technologies and markets that radically alerted everyday human-animal relations. It was also a period in which new theories of human responsibilities towards animals were also being articulated with Donald Watson coining the idea of veganism in 1944. The recent “animal turn” in the humanities invites new ways of thinking about the beasts that we find in modernist culture. Moreover, animal studies arrives at a point at which modernist studies is already in the process of redefining what modernism means. Turning to modernism’s beasts not only promises fresh ways of understanding its multispecies foundations, but also points towards how modernist studies might intervene in contemporary debates around animal life. Individual papers should be no more than twenty minutes in length. Please send an abstract of 300 words and a brief biography to
[email protected]
by 31 January. We welcome proposals for panels or roundtables of 3 to 4 speakers. Please send an abstract of 500 words and speaker biographies to
[email protected]
by 31 January.
This year’s annual meeting
of The Society for the Study of Social Problems
(SSSP)
will emphasize the “social in social problems.” The divisions on
Conflict, Social Action, and Change
and
Labor Studies
are co-sponsoring a panel titled “Organizing Labor.” Panel participants will include activists and scholars interested in a critical dialogue related to labor organizing and paid/unpaid care work. Instead of the traditional focus on human care, the panel will incorporate animal care and its dimensions. Care workers like veterinarians, farmers, and sanctuary workers, both witness and experience intersecting forms of structurally-based violence. Social problems like food insecurity, domestic violence, unaffordable healthcare, and hyper-exploitation of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities are amplified in care work. As such care workers are a powerful voice in labor organizing, which has almost entirely excluded animal care labor. If your work is rooted in research, teaching, and/or activism related to this important and powerful demographic group, please consider submitting an abstract. The conference will be held in New York City on August 9
th
-11
th
and the
deadline for submitting abstracts
is January 31
st
. Email Erin Evans directly with questions at
[email protected]
.
The
International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) 2019 conference, Animals in the Public Eye: Interactions and Perceptions of Animals
, will be held on July 1-4, 2019 in Orlando, Florida, USA. The conference will be an examination of the observed societal shift in our perceptions of multiple species with an emphasis in the areas of entertainment, exhibitry, cultural norms, and human education. Abstract submissions are currently being accepted. All submissions are due by Friday, February 8, 2019.
Click here
to preview a PDF of the submission form to see the information needed for submission. Submit abstracts online here:
abstract submission form
. For more information, visit
https://www.isaz2019.net/
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In 2015 the fashion magazine
Vogue
placed US Triple Crown winner, American Pharoah, on its cover. Captured by well-known fashion photographer Seven Klein, Pharoah’s stylized portrait saw him classically situated before a white background, his side to the viewer, and with a garland of roses draped over his withers. The public outcry was immediate. Instantly equating the horse’s body with those of the human models in the magazine’s pages, many readers considered his lean, Thoroughbred shape ‘sickly’. One reader argued the editors had ‘altered the photo to reduce him to nothing more than some of the anorexic models featured in your magazine’. Similarly, another reader questioned whether ‘horses have to be as skinny as models nowadays? Awfull!! [sic].’ However, other readers quickly came to Pharoah’s defense, and using the language of body positivity often called upon to resist the fashion industry’s ideal body shape for women, quickly called for his critics to ‘#stopbodyshaminghorses’.
The Pharoah controversy immediately equated the (male) horse with the feminine – a Thoroughbred of the racing world with the thoroughbreds of the modeling industry – in a gendered mixing of animal and human bodies. Such mixing is not unique, and is a ubiquitous component of human-horse relationships over time. However, the relationship between human and non-human gendered bodies, their performativity, and identities has only recently come under scholarly investigation. As a result, this book collection seeks to continue the discussions on horse-human gender and gender performance begun by such works as Monica Mattfeld, Becoming Centaur, Donna Landry, Noble Brutes, and Karen Raber and Treva Tucker, Culture of the Horse. It will explore horse-human interactions (and intra-actions) from a theoretically knowledgeable viewpoint, while offering new perspectives on how human and animal gender was created, experienced and performed. We invite papers that explore the role and ‘intra-action’ of horses in gender from all time periods, from a wide array of geographies and contexts, and from multiple disciplinary perspectives within the humanities. Papers that explore horses and gender in non-Anglocentric equestrian cultures are especially welcome. Please send abstracts of not more than 300 words along with a brief biography, also of not more than 300 words, to Kristen Guest (
[email protected]
) or Monica Mattfeld (
[email protected]
) by March 30.
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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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