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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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- William Lynn, Research Scientist, Marsh Institute at Clark University, and Research Fellow, NewKnowledge
- Carrie Rohman, Associate Professor, English, Lafayette College
- Juno Salazar-Parrenas, Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University
- May Berenbaum, Professor of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Saheed Aderinto, Associate Professor, History, Western Carolina University
- Deke Weaver, Associate Professor of Theater and New Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Chris Green, Executive Director of the Animal Law & Policy Program, Harvard University
- Maria Lux, Assistant Professor, Art, Whitman College
We are extremely pleased to announce that the Universidade de Lisboa has been awarded the 2019-2020
International Development Project Award
from the Animals & Society Institute, for the creation of a Human-Animal Studies Hub at the University. From the project proposal:
The HAS hub @ICS-ULisboa aims to create and foster HAS in Portugal. Using the hub concept, this proposal intends to boost social innovation, to build a collaborative community on HAS with shared goals, to attract diverse members with heterogenous knowledge, and to facilitate creativity and collaboration in physical and digital space. The implementation of a HAS hub @ICS-ULisboa would be favored not only by the growing critical mass that has been increasingly gathering around the topic, but also by the thriving academic environment of the University of Lisbon to which the Institute belongs. This will give the hub a strategic positioning not only at a national level, but also at an international one. ICS-ULisboa is an institute of the University of Lisbon, which is the largest and most prestigious university in Portugal and one of Europe’s leading universities. Having almost 50.000 students, the University of Lisbon brings together various areas of knowledge and has a privileged position for facilitating the contemporary evolution of science, technology, arts and humanities. Accepting the responsibility of making the city of Lisbon one of the great European capitals of culture and science, the University of Lisbon welcomes about 6.900 international students each year, about 14.5% of the total number of students coming from more than 100 countries, who seek a high quality education, as well as the culture, climate and hospitality that Lisbon and Portugal have to offer.
In particular, the grant will help fund the organization of the first national post-graduate course in HAS; the organization of an international conference; the publication of a handbook in HAS in Portuguese; and the co-organization of an international Summer School in HAS. We are so excited about this, and about the development of a brand new HAS program in Portugal!
We are excited to announce the latest book from ASI’s
Human-Animal Studies Book Series
!
Animals and Their People: Connecting East and West in Cultural Animal Studies
, edited by Anna Barcz and Dorota Łagodzka, provides a zoocentric insight into philosophical, artistic, and literary problems in Western, Anglo-American, and Central-Eastern European context. The contributors go beyond treating humans as the sole object of research and comprehension, and focus primarily on non-human animals. This book results from intellectual exchange between Polish and foreign researchers and highlights cultural perspective as an exciting language of animal representation.
Animals and Their People
aims to bridge the gap between Anglo-American and Central European human-animal studies.
Animal Law Review invites you to join us at
Lewis & Clark Law School's 8th Annual Animal Law Review Symposium
on Friday, March 15th of 2019. Every year the Annual Animal Law Review Symposium has a theme that reflects the dynamic and groundbreaking nature of the animal law field. The theme for our symposium this year is Cycles of Violence: Examining the Relationship Between Human and Nonhuman Animal Oppression and Exploitation. The symposium will examine the intersectional nature of the oppression and exploitation of both human and nonhuman animals, and the ways in which these dualistic systems of oppression interact to exacerbate and perpetuate one another. Animal Law Review has arranged for a special group of experts in the field to speak at this year’s symposium, and we invite you to join us for an in-depth discussion of the intersectionality of human and nonhuman animal oppression and exploitation. ASI’s own Margo DeMello will be speaking!
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Funding and Job Opportunities
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The
Special Collections Research Center
(SCRC) at the North Carolina State University Libraries is excited to offer the first annual Tom Regan Visiting Research Fellowship. The fellowship has been established through the generosity of the
Culture & Animals Foundation
in memory of Tom Regan to promote scholarly research in animal rights. CAF continues to offer annual grants to scholars and artists working on these issues.
The fellowship will support the use of the SCRC’s
Animal Rights Archive
—the largest scholarly archive of animal rights collections in the country. The SCRC builds collections of rare and unique materials to support the research and teaching needs of the university, emphasizing established and emerging areas at the university and corresponding to strengths within the Libraries’ overall collection. These rich collections serve as a foundation for generations of scholarship in animal protection, impacting and supporting scholars from across the nation. The fellowship provides a $4,000 stipend awarded to a qualified applicant for research completed in residence at the SCRC for a term of no less than four weeks to begin on or after July 1. Applicants must submit (electronic preferred) the researcher’s curriculum vitae, a cover page including name, address, phone, email, institutional affiliation, current position/title, a project outline and rationale for use of the collections, the names of three appropriate references, and a detailed budget. Eligible expenses include travel (air, train, or bus ticket charges; car rental; mileage using a personal vehicle; and parking fees.) Also included are lodging, meals, and reproduction expenses. Graduate students should also submit a letter of recommendation from a faculty advisor or theses director on the significance of the research topic and abilities of the candidate. Applications are due annually by
April 30
. Awardees will be notified by June 1 for support to begin on July 1 and to be completed by August 15 of the same year. For more information and to submit applications, please contact Gwynn Thayer at
[email protected]
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Courses on Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law
are a series of four specialised courses designed to provide participants with an in-depth appreciation of animal welfare science, ethics and law and are aimed at anyone with a professional or personal interest in animal welfare. With a legacy of over two decades, CAWSEL takes place from the 8 to the 20 September in Cambridge UK, in an informal, classroom-style environment where 15 world renowned animal welfare experts deliver the material through a range of presentations, videos and open discussions. Every year we welcome participants from all corners of the word and grants are available to fund attendance. Early Bird rates and funding applications close on
April 30
.
CAWSEL
is comprised of four individual courses:
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Following are some of the books coming out this month that we are excited about!
Akhtar, A. (2019).
Our Symphony With Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies
. Pegasus.
Barcz, A., & Łagodzka, D. (Eds.). (2019).
Animals and Their People: Connecting East and West in Critical Animal Studies
. Brill.
Bornemark, J., Andersson, P., & von Essen, U. E. (Eds.). (2019).
Equine Cultures in Transition: Ethical Questions
. Routledge.
Lobb, J. (2019).
The Flight of Birds
. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press.
Małecki, W., Sorokowski, P., Pawłowski, B., & Cieński, M. (2019).
Human Minds and Animal Stories: How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species
. Routledge.
Pedersen, H. (2019).
Schizoanalysis and Animal Science Education
. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Simons, J. (2019).
Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London
. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press.
Slovic, S., Rangarajan, S., & Sarveswaran, V. (Eds.). (2019).
Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication
. Routledge.
Taylor, N. and H. Fraser. (2019).
Companion Animals and Domestic Violence: Rescuing Me, Rescuing You
. Palgrave Macmillan.
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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]
.
The interdisciplinary journal
Animals
invites submissions to a special issue on the following topic:
Animal Ethics: Questioning the Orthodoxy.
Guest editors: Herwig Grimm and Susana Monsó (Messerli Research Institute Vienna). Deadline for submissions:
September 30
.
It has become commonplace to refer to the success of animal ethics and the animal turn in philosophy. Since Singer and Regan published their ground-breaking works more than forty years ago, animal ethics has become an institutionalised field of research. This is mirrored in the appearance of entire journals, book series, text books, BA, MA and PhD programmes, conferences, research institutes, etc. devoted to it. To use a metaphor, animal ethics is no longer a toddler, but a teenager, full of energy, beginning to question its heritage and its future. This Special Issue aims to channel this rebellious spirit in order to help lay down the foundations for a prosperous adulthood. Therefore, we invite submissions that call into question the orthodoxy in animal ethics. In particular, we aim to collect a series of papers that question:
- Classical premises: papers that address key terms and claims that were previously taken for granted, such as speciesism, the dichotomy moral agents/patients, the inherent disvalue of animal pain and suffering, the is/ought gap, etc.
- Classical theories and methodologies: papers that bring innovations into animal ethics by applying methodologies that until recently were often neglected, such as phenomenology, pragmatism, feminism, interdisciplinary and empirically-informed approaches, etc.
- Classical topics: papers that pick up topics that were ignored or under-treated in the canonical texts, such as human interventions in nature, the predator–prey problem, companion animals, cognitive enhancement and disenhancement of animals, representation of animals, duties towards invertebrates, meaning in the lives of animals, etc.
We welcome submissions addressing these and further relevant topics. With this Special Issue, we aim to deliver an overview of new solutions to canonical problems and new problems that were previously unseen. We expect to map out new directions in the field of animal ethics and contribute to clarifying the self-understanding of the discipline. Please kindly note that for submissions to this special issue there is a word limit of 8,000 words (references not included). Further information can be found in this
link
. Informal inquiries can be sent to:
[email protected]
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
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!
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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The Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals (SSEA) invites abstracts for a day-long workshop on August 7, 2019 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Abstracts on any topic relating to animal ethics are welcome. This preconference event is being held in conjunction with the Twelfth Annual Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, which takes place at CU Boulder from August 8-11. The workshop is made possible by generous support from CU Philosophy Department’s Center for Values and Social Policy. Abstracts are due on
March 15.
Notification of acceptance by May 15. Abstracts should be 750-1000 words and prepared for blind review. Please submit abstracts to Bob Fischer (
[email protected]
). The workshop will have a pre-read format, with the aim of providing focused, constructive feedback on works in progress. Full papers are due on July 1 for distribution to other attendees.
Human–Animal Studies Summer School: Companion Animals in (Late) Modernity: The Shared Lives of Humans and Other Animals
. June 3-7, ICS-ULisboa Lisbon, Portugal. Lecturers include Margo DeMello, Animals & Society Institute, USA; Verónica Policarpo, ICS-ULisboa, Portugal; Nora Schuurman, University of Turku, Finland; and David Redmalm, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
This course examines the ambiguous status of companion animals in modern society, and works as an introduction to theoretical and methodological issues central to the field of human-animal studies. The course also intends to be a laboratory of experimentation of new ideas for young scholars as well as guiding participants in their ongoing projects on human–animal relationships. The course focuses on the following questions:
- How do companion animals and humans engage in practices inside and outside home and the co-building of hybrid communities? To what extent are these practices human-centred?
- How are dichotomies such as nature/culture and animal/human played out in human-animal relationships? How do human–animal relationships produce animality?
- How can animal agency be theoretically conceptualized? How are power relations enacted and negotiated between humans and companion animals?
- What kind of methods can be used to study human–animal relationships?
- How do humans grieve the death of companion animals?
The course spans over one week – five full days of lectures, discussions and a field trip. The participants will prepare by reading a collection of mandatory and optional texts. Each participant will also present a planned or ongoing human–animal studies thesis project, followed by a discussion with lecturers and course participants. The applicant must hold a Master’s degree, and be preferentially accepted to a PhD programme, in any field of social sciences and humanities (sociology, geography, history, anthropology, ethnology, literature, psychology, philosophy, law, etc.). Degrees in other disciplines with a link to the study of human–animal relations will also be considered (biology, veterinary science etc.). In all cases, the applicant should have basic knowledge of the theories and methods within social sciences or humanities. The applicant should be planning or working on a thesis project connected to human–animal studies. Course fee: 250 euros to be paid by all participants.
The deadline for applications is
15 March
. Send your application via email with a doc, docx or pdf file to
[email protected]
. The file should include your name, contact details, level of education, the name of the university where you are currently affiliated, and a description of 500 words of a planned or ongoing thesis project. After acceptance, participants will be asked to submit an additional 1500 words about their project.
“Relationality” has been a central approach to the development of Human-Animal Studies as a field of academic inquiry. Therein, the reevaluation of human-animal relations has so far followed primarily an assessment of the individual entities in a relation, followed by a comparison that establishes corresponding or differing capacities, or the effects one has on the other. More than looking at the relation as such, relationality follows here as a consequence a comparative approach, from which insights on the relationship are deduced. ESSIR aims at further refining and expanding relationality as a methodological lens for HAS by focusing on interspecies relationality and making the relation our analytical priority. The focus, then, becomes studying the interrelation and interdependency itself, as well as the mutual coproduction, influencing and curtailing of the entities in a relation, and thus to always think of entities within and through their relations to others. In addition to this conceptual refinement of relationality, we also call for explicitly expanding the perspective of relationality as well by asking about relations between nonhuman animals, of the same species, across different species, and between groups of animals. The program will offer a shared space of critical inquiry to explore and develop interspecies relationality as a methodological research approach in close connection with the participants own projects. It will bring the participants’ work-in-progress to the attention of a network of influential HAS scholars, and provides the participants with the guidance and feedback to develop their work. ESSIR’s faculty comprises of leaders in HAS that simultaneously serve as representatives of established research initiatives and groups throughout Europe as well as the Animals & Society Institute (USA). In addition to developing “Interspecies Relationality” as a research approach, ESSIR thus provides an opportunity for early career scholars to build their professional networks with established researchers in the field of HAS. Participants should expect a stimulating intellectual environment reflecting a diversity of approaches, projects, disciplinary backgrounds, and ethical positions on animal issues. The Summer School is co-hosted by Mieke Roscher and André Krebber (Resident Directors) alongside Margo DeMello and Kenneth Shapiro (ASI).
Speakers include:
Mechthild Bereswill, Kassel
Tobias Linné, Lund
Robert McKay, Sheffield
Claire Parkinson, Edge Hill
David Redmalm, Uppsala
Reingard Spannring, Innsbruck
Jessica Ullrich, Nurenberg/Frankfurt
Dinesh Wadiwel, Sydney
Kerstin Weich, Messerli
There is no tuition fee. Accommodation, travel and activities during the school are fully funded for all participants. The language of conversation at ESSIR will be English and residency in Kassel throughout the school is compulsory. Childcare will be provided when the school is in session.
Applicants must (1) be a doctoral student or early career scholar no more than two years past the Ph.D., OR be an MA/JD student in the advanced stages of their degree, OR a professional degree student seeking a degree in law, veterinary medicine, public policy, and so on; (2) have a commitment to advancing research in Human-Animal Studies; and (3), submit a follow-up report six months after the program’s completion. Applications are encouraged from the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences, as long as the project is taking a Human-Animal Studies approach. The summer school is open to all nationalities. If you are interested and unsure if you are eligible, please contact the directors.
To apply, please submit electronically: (1) a cover letter outlining your motivation for participating in the summer school (1‒2 pages), (2) a description of your project (1 page), (3) a CV (no more than 3 pages) and (4) a writing sample (no more than 15 pages) to
[email protected]
. Participants will be chosen primarily with regard to the HAS focus and relevance for the central theme of their projects and their relevance for further developing “Interspecies Relationality” as a method. The application deadline is 31 March. Funding generously provided by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Call for Papers: “Animals in Literature and Film”
(Permanent Panel) Midwest Modern Languages Association November 13–17, 2019 in Chicago, IL
This year's "Animals in Literature and Film" panel at the Midwest Modern Languages Association's annual meeting (November 13–17, 2019 in Chicago, IL) invites papers engaging the conference’s theme of “Doubles, Duality, and Doppelgangers,” specifically how works of literature or film reflect or confound perceived differences between human and non-human animals. Discussing his cat, Jacques Derrida asks in “The animal that therefore I am,” “How can an animal look you in the face?” He goes on to consider the philosophical and moral issues in the word “animal,” as a word imposed on others by human beings. In response, Donna Haraway criticizes Derrida for not “seriously consider[ing] an alternative form of engagement ... one that risked knowing something more about cats and how to look back, perhaps even scientifically, biologically, and therefore also philosophically and intimately.” Haraway’s comment points to the continued privileging of the human over the animal, even in philosophical discourse that positions humans alongside animals. Art often explores this privileging at the same time it questions or exploits it. The narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s “Blue Lenses” wakes up after surgery only to see that everyone—every human—has suddenly turned into an animal. When she reluctantly looks at herself in the mirror, she realizes that she too was an animal all along. What happens when we look in the mirror and see an animal staring back at us?
This panel will examine the parallels and similarities between humans and animals in literature and film. We invite submissions from all fields that engage in this topic from a literary, cinematic, or art historical angle both in our own cultural moment and beyond it. While we welcome submissions that engage in all languages and literatures, please plan to deliver your paper in English. Abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding bibliography) should be sent to Margaret Day (
[email protected]
) by
April 5
. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, the title of your paper, and any special audio-visual needs in the body of your email.
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Animals and Race
-- Edited collection, by Jonathan W. Thurston
When Iago informs Brabantio that “a black ram is tupping your white ewe” (I.i.87-88) in Shakespeare’s Othello, he is doing more than identifying the two protagonists’ races. He is referring to the early modern agricultural fact that black wool was undesirable, as per Leonard Mascall, and that black rams would threaten the livelihood of shepherds by decreasing the profitability of a flock of sheep. In this way, the black ram becomes a metaphor not just for interracial taboo but for generational corruption and loss of social capital due to racist structures of power. The study of nonhuman animals and the study of human race are often quite distinct for scholars across disciplines. However, perhaps there is more overlap than one would think. In what ways has race formation been tied to animals? Why do animals often become implicated in racial slurs? What does it mean for there to be a black panther representing a black political group or even standing in as the token black superhero? What does it mean to have a mostly black cast of voice actors in the original The Lion King, except its star role? This collection will look closely at the ways that critical animal studies and critical race studies intersect, tracking the blurring of concepts like race and breed. It will ask how race has always been tied into questions of the animal–human divide. How has knowledge of animals informed our knowledge of race, and vice versa? How have codes of animal behavior affected our racial discourse and our race thinking? And how have these two seemingly disparate approaches danced with each other in academia? These are only a few of the questions this book will attempt to tackle. I invite chapters that approach animals and race from a wide array of cultures, periods, and disciplines. Topics that are not anglocentric and are before the twentieth century are welcome. Send abstracts of around 250 words and a brief academic biography to Jonathan W. Thurston (
[email protected]
) by
July 1.
The chapters themselves (5,000-8,000 words) will be due in January 2020. Book proposal will be sent first to Routledge’s Human-Animal series.
Gender and Horses
-
-Edited Collection, by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld
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.
Battlefields and Homefronts: An Anthology of Food and Warfare, 1500-Present --
Edited Collection
,
University of Arkansas Press, by Justin Nordstrom
Battlefields and Homefronts: Historical Perspectives on Food and Warfare from 1500 to the Present
is a forthcoming anthology to be published by the University of Arkansas Press as part of its Food and Foodways Series. This anthology will bring together historians writing across a diverse variety of sub-fields and international perspectives. While intentionally broad in scope, the book’s unifying theme would be how soldiers, civilians, and communities used food (and its absence, deprivation and hunger,) as both a weapon of war and as a unifying force in establishing governmental control and cultural cohesion during times of conflict.
This anthology will pay specific attention to global questions of food and warfare, and is particularly interested in contributions focusing outside of Europe and North America, examining international facets and interdisciplinary perspectives on food history.
Questions and proposals (no longer than 300 words) can be sent to Justin Nordstrom at
[email protected]
(Please include the phrase “Battlefields and Homefronts” in subject line) 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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