Iván San­doval Cer­vantes (PhD Can­di­date in Anthro­pol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Oregon)

• Wednes­day, May 22 from 3:30pm-5:00pm
• Thom­son 403

This paper is an attempt to the­o­ret­i­cally con­struct a con­cept of multi-species ethnog­ra­phy that addresses the ways in which the inequal­i­ties pro­duced by processes of glob­al­iza­tion affect non­hu­man ani­mals. In this sense, a multi-species ethno­graph­i­cal project should see non­hu­man ani­mals not only as sym­bols or as part of the nat­ural resources avail­able to humans but as part of com­plex his­tor­i­cal inter­species tra­jec­to­ries (Kirk­sey and Helm­re­ich 2010).

These tra­jec­to­ries include notions about own­er­ship that reg­u­late the rela­tions between human and non­hu­man ani­mals. It is by ana­lyz­ing these tra­jec­to­ries that multi-species ethno­gra­phies can ques­tion how dif­fer­ent non­hu­man ani­mal species have been placed in what I call (based Aiwha Ong’s (2006) con­cept of “grad­u­ated cit­i­zen­ship”) “grad­u­ated human­ness” that encom­passes ideas about ani­mal and human rights, and the agency of non­hu­man ani­mals, and that influ­ences how humans inter­act with non­hu­man ani­mals. To exem­plify the use of this the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work I will ana­lyze an event that took place in Mex­ico City in Jan­u­ary 2013 that involved a pack of “wild” dogs “attack­ing” and “killing” a group of peo­ple in Mex­ico City’s most pop­u­lated borough.

María Elena Gar­cía (CHID/JSIS)

• Thurs­day May 16, 12:00–1:30
• Thom­son 403

Peru is in the midst of a much cel­e­brated gas­tro­nomic boom. Pro­mot­ers of this boom invoke the country’s “nat­ural” bio­di­ver­sity as key to Peru­vian cuisine’s suc­cess. This local cel­e­bra­tion of food, along with the push toward the global mar­ket­ing of Peru­vian cui­sine, has implied greater extrac­tion and con­sump­tion of “nat­ural resources” such as indige­nous grains, tubers, fruits, and ani­mals that are seen as some of the cen­tral ingre­di­ents of novoandino cui­sine. While the extrac­tion of other kinds of nat­ural resources have resulted in waves of protest over the “destruc­tion of nature”, less has been said about the extrac­tion, con­sump­tion and in some cases genetic manip­u­la­tion of the plants and ani­mals at the cen­ter of the so-called gas­tro­nomic rev­o­lu­tion. This paper is an explo­ration of the biopol­i­tics and cos­mopol­i­tics of Peru­vian food. Specif­i­cally, I offer a mul­ti­species, gen­dered analy­sis of the genetic and repro­duc­tive manip­u­la­tion of guinea pig bod­ies tak­ing place as a result of the national excite­ment around Peru­vian novoandino cuisine.

Cather­ine Hagan (Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Vet­eri­nary Patho­bi­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Missouri)

• Mon­day May 6, 12:00–2:00
• Sav­ery 408

This work­shop will con­tinue a con­ver­sa­tion that began last year, when we explored the issue of com­pas­sion fatigue and burnout in peo­ple work­ing with ani­mals in research. Again, the pri­mary con­text to be dis­cussed is peo­ple work­ing with ani­mals in research. While a dis­cus­sion of alter­na­tives to ani­mal use is impor­tant, this work­shop is not intended to be a dis­cus­sion about whether or not it is appro­pri­ate for ani­mals to be used in such cir­cum­stances. Rather, we will focus on explor­ing ideas and strate­gies for sup­port­ing peo­ple whose jobs involve dif­fi­cult and emo­tion­ally demand­ing aspects of ani­mal care.

Cather­ine Hagan is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Vet­eri­nary Patho­bi­ol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Mis­souri. She received a B.S. degree in Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, a D.V.M. from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cel­lu­lar Biol­ogy from the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton, Seat­tle. She com­pleted a res­i­dency at UW in the Depart­ment of Com­par­a­tive Med­i­cine in lab­o­ra­tory ani­mal med­i­cine and com­par­a­tive pathol­ogy in 2008 and was an act­ing fac­ulty mem­ber there until leav­ing this past fall. Her research explores stress, sero­tonin, and brain innate immunity.

Annie Dwyer (English)

• Thurs­day April 25, 12:00–1:30
• Thom­son 403

This paper is an excerpt from a dis­ser­ta­tion chap­ter enti­tled “Prim­i­tive Accu­mu­la­tions.” The chap­ter explores how mate­r­ial prac­tices involv­ing ani­mals and emer­gent mean­ings of ani­mal­ity set the stage for the per­for­mance of mas­culin­ity and the enact­ment of racial­ized vio­lence. The human-animal encounter that anchors the dis­cus­sion is the hunt, more specif­i­cally, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of hunt­ing writ­ten either by or about Theodore Roo­sevelt. In read­ing these rep­re­sen­ta­tions, this chap­ter traces how ani­mal­ity accrues the sense of sav­agery — expressed and accessed through the exer­cise of vio­lence — in the Amer­i­can cul­tural imag­i­nary over the course of the Pro­gres­sive era. Ulti­mately, this chap­ter links the cul­tural reimag­in­ing of the ani­mal as a “bar­barous beast” to the resur­gence of a prim­i­tivist imag­i­nary autho­riz­ing cap­i­tal­ist accu­mu­la­tion — what we might call prim­i­tive accu­mu­la­tion, to both invoke and expand Marx’s use of the term.

The excerpt I will be dis­trib­ut­ing focuses specif­i­cally on Roosevelt’s famous 1902 Mis­sis­sippi bear hunt. Dur­ing the hunt, Roo­sevelt dra­mat­i­cally dis­played his “good sports­man­ship” in refus­ing to kill a black bear that had been beaten and tied so that he might claim the tro­phy. While the event is well-known for inspir­ing the cre­ation of the teddy bear, schol­ars have largely neglected how the sub­text of the news cov­er­age — a pub­lic debate about lynch­ing — pro­pelled the story’s rise to celebrity. The black hunt­ing guide who led the hunt, Holt Col­lier, fig­ures as largely as Roo­sevelt in rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the event, as he held the bear at bay under pres­sure to help Roo­sevelt “bag” his game. In show­ing how rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the event fueled the myth of the black rapist, I also explore how the per­mis­si­bil­ity of vio­lence against ani­mals and the rein­vest­ment of ani­mal­ity with the sense of sav­agery under­wrote the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of mob vio­lence in the Jim Crow south.

Karen S. Emmer­man, PhD in Phi­los­o­phy, Uni­ver­sity of Washington

• Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 25
• 12:00–2:00, Thom­son 403

In Respect for Nature, Paul W. Tay­lor argued that humans have a duty to make resti­tu­tion any time we harm wild ani­mals and plants in ser­vice of human inter­ests.  He sug­gested that resti­tu­tion is cru­cial for show­ing respect for the lives and well-being of the liv­ing things we harm in the course of pur­su­ing our lives.  Tay­lor fur­ther averred that resti­tu­tion, when prop­erly under­taken, means “we need not bear a bur­den of eter­nal guilt because we have used them – and will con­tinue to use them – for our own ends.  There is a way to make amends” (Tay­lor 1986, 306).  While Taylor’s reminder that resti­tu­tion is a vital part of our inter­ac­tions with non­hu­mans when­ever we cause them harm, he does not reflect deeply on the com­pli­ca­tions encoun­tered by these efforts in the inter-species realm. 

In this essay, I pro­pose to under­take a care­ful exam­i­na­tion of the com­plex­i­ties of mak­ing resti­tu­tion (or under­tak­ing the work of moral repair as I call it, bor­row­ing from Mar­garet Urban Walker) to non­hu­man ani­mals.  In par­tic­u­lar, I will explore how cap­tiv­ity com­pli­cates our efforts to suc­cess­fully do the work of moral repair when we have harmed, neglected, or oth­er­wise inflicted dam­age on non­hu­man ani­mals.  Where cap­tiv­ity is a nec­es­sary part of our efforts to make things right again, it may well be that we can never fully make amends.

Fem­i­nist schol­ars con­cerned with the plight of ani­mals and women have argued that female ani­mals tend to be dis­pro­por­tion­ately exploited for their pro­duc­tive and repro­duc­tive capa­bil­i­ties. And this is cer­tainly the case; female farmed ani­mals are used in a num­ber of ways that uniquely exploit their female repro­duc­tive capa­bil­i­ties. How­ever, an expanded, more geo­graph­i­cal, fem­i­nist approach uncov­ers the ways in which the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of farmed ani­mal bod­ies is highly gen­dered for both male and female animals.

Using the empir­i­cal case study of the dairy indus­try in the Pacific North­west­ern United States, this paper per­forms a gen­dered analy­sis of the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the bovine bod­ies and lives at the heart of the indus­try. This paper first reviews the more overt ways in which the female repro­duc­tive body is used along­side the less com­monly researched role of the male body in order to draw out the ways in which ani­mals are uniquely com­mod­i­fied based on their sex. Next, this paper takes up an explo­ration of the var­i­ous dis­courses (the pop­u­lar dis­course, the for­mal indus­try dis­course and the col­lo­quial indus­try dis­course) that work to repro­duce the lived real­i­ties of bovine ani­mals in the industry.

Through a review of the lived real­i­ties of these ani­mals, the vio­lence of the sys­tem itself becomes clear, but this vio­lence is then simul­ta­ne­ously both con­cealed and fur­ther expressed by the dis­courses of con­sumers and pro­duc­ers. This paper explores this sex­u­al­ized vio­lence against the ani­mal in the hopes of draw­ing atten­tion to the mun­dane, every­day forms of vio­lence that remain largely unseen.

We will be meet­ing to dis­cuss works by

• Katie Gille­spie on Jan­u­ary 28, 2013 from 12:00–2:00, Room TBA
• Karen Emmer­man on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2013 from 12:00–2:00, Room TBA.

More infor­ma­tion soon!

A work­shop with Sabine Noell­gen on her paper on gen­der and nature in Werner Herzog’s works.

• Date: Mon­day, Novem­ber 26th, 2012
• Time: 2:30pm to 4:00pm
• Loca­tion: Thomp­son 403

“‘An Hom­bre Like Me’: Mas­culin­ity and Nature in Werner Herzog’s Griz­zly Man (paper under con­sid­er­a­tion for Col­lo­quia Germanica’s spe­cial issue on Lit­er­a­ture and the Envi­ron­ment 2012) attempts to counter a lack of gen­der approaches to Werner Herzog’s films. I pro­pose that Her­zog, whose larger body of films dis­plays a strik­ing excess of mas­cu­line fail­ures, presents the sub­ject of his doc­u­men­tary as a social mis­fit and out­sider, who fails both to sur­vive in the wild and, more impor­tantly, to live with other peo­ple. My paper detects how Her­zog codes this fail­ure and posi­tions him­self towards the gen­der and species ambi­gu­ity dis­played. More­over, my inves­ti­ga­tion of nar­ra­tive per­for­ma­tiv­ity in Griz­zly Man get an eco­crit­i­cal edge when sug­gest­ing that both nar­ra­tors’ con­struc­tion of mas­cu­line iden­tity is closely tied to their filmic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of nature. Ulti­mately, I pro­pose, Herzog’s final jump from look­ing at one man’s iden­tity cri­sis to a uni­ver­sal human con­di­tion not only dis­re­gards the gen­der aspects of the story that he tells, but, when reestab­lish­ing a nos­tal­gic look at nature that allows for equally nos­tal­gic heroic mas­culin­ity, leaves his own pre­con­ceived notions of nature unexamined.”

Our Hen House (www.ourhenhouse.org/), named by Veg­News Mag­a­zine as the 2011 Indie Media Pow­er­house, is a mul­ti­me­dia hub of oppor­tu­ni­ties to main­stream the move­ment to end ani­mal exploita­tion. Jas­min and Mar­i­ann, the founders — and the hosts of the pop­u­lar Our Hen House pod­cast – will share the path that led them to cre­at­ing Our Hen House, how the site is influ­enced and informed by aca­d­e­mics’ involve­ment, and how we can use our own par­tic­u­lar skills, tal­ents and expe­ri­ence to build a new world free of ani­mal exploita­tion.  In this inti­mate work­shop, ani­mal law pro­fes­sor Mar­i­ann Sul­li­van and writer Jas­min Singer, will share ideas for turn­ing thought into action, and action into real change. With a focus on  ‘The Gay Ani­mal,’ ‘The Legal Eagle,’ and other unique projects of Our Hen House, this work­shop also offers the oppor­tu­nity to explore the inter­sec­tions of var­i­ous social move­ments and our role in mov­ing those efforts forward.