Tag Archives: events

Timothy Pachirat

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Tim­o­thy Pachi­rat (The New School), “Every Twelve Sec­onds: Indus­tri­al­ized Slaugh­ter and the Pol­i­tics of Sight”

  • May 10, 12:00–2:00, Faculty-Graduate Stu­dent Work­shop (Thom­son 317)
  • May 10, 5:00–7:00, Pub­lic Lec­ture (Room TBD)

Abstract: This talk brings to life the mas­sive, rou­tine killing of ani­mals for human con­sump­tion from the per­spec­tive of those who take part in it.  Draw­ing on more than five months of under­cover employ­ment as a liver hanger, cat­tle dri­ver, and qual­ity con­trol worker on the kill floor of a Great Plains slaugh­ter­house where 2,500 cat­tle were killed per day, it explores not only the slaugh­ter indus­try but also how, as a soci­ety, we facil­i­tate vio­lent labor and hide away that which we find too repug­nant to contemplate.

Tim­o­thy Pachi­rat (Ph.D. Yale) works as an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Pol­i­tics at The New School for Social Research. His research and teach­ing inter­ests include com­par­a­tive pol­i­tics, the pol­i­tics of South­east Asia, spa­tial and visual pol­i­tics, the soci­ol­ogy of dom­i­na­tion and resis­tance, the polit­i­cal econ­omy of dirty and dan­ger­ous work, and inter­pre­tive and ethno­graphic research meth­ods. Pachirat’s work has received awards from the Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Association’s Sec­tion on Qual­i­ta­tive Meth­ods and from the Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Association’s Labor Project. He is author of Every Twelve Sec­onds: Indus­tri­al­ized Slaugh­ter and the Pol­i­tics of Sight (Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011), a polit­i­cal ethnog­ra­phy of immi­grant labor on the kill floor of an indus­tri­al­ized slaugh­ter­house that explores how vio­lence that is seen as both essen­tial and repug­nant to mod­ern soci­ety is orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, reg­u­lated, and repro­duced.  Pachi­rat grew up in north­east­ern and north­ern Thai­land and lives in Brook­lyn, NY.

This event is co-sponsored by Com­par­a­tive His­tory of Ideas, the Clowes Cen­ter for the Study of Con­flict and Dia­logue, the Diver­sity Research Insti­tute, Geog­ra­phy, Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Stud­ies, and Law, Soci­eties and Justice.

Also, be sure to view the recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about Tim­o­thy Pachirat’s work!

Lesley A. Sharp

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Les­ley A. Sharp (Barnard Col­lege and Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity), “Hybrid Bod­ies and Ani­mal Sci­ence: Moral Think­ing in Xeno­trans­plant Research”

  • March 9, 3:30pm, Sav­ery 206

Abstract: In this lec­ture, Prof. Sharp will report on her more recent research among sci­en­tists who are actively work­ing to develop tech­niques for “xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion,” i.e. trans­plant­ing into human beings organs taken from other species. Xeno­trans­plan­ta­tion has been envi­sioned, by some, as a means of address­ing the “short­age” of avail­able organs, while avoid­ing some of the more trou­bling aspects of human organ donation.

Les­ley A. Sharp is a med­ical anthro­pol­o­gist on fac­ulty at Barnard Col­lege (Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy) and Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity (Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy and Sociomed­ical Sci­ences), whose work is con­cerned with crit­i­cal analy­ses of the sym­bol­ics of the human body. For the past two decades she has con­ducted ethno­graphic research on organ trans­plan­ta­tion, pro­cure­ment, and dona­tion in the United States. This work has focused espe­cially on med­ical ide­olo­gies, body com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion, and the trans­for­ma­tive prop­er­ties of organ trans­plants, specif­i­cally in ref­er­ence to the social con­struc­tion of the self. Her 2008 book, Strange Har­vest: Organ Trans­plants, Dena­tured Bod­ies, and the Trans­formed Self was awarded the New Mil­le­nium Book Prize by the Soci­ety for Med­ical Anthro­pol­ogy, given every other year to the book “judged to be the most sig­nif­i­cant and poten­tially influ­en­tial con­tri­bu­tion to med­ical anthro­pol­ogy.” More about Les­ley Sharp: https://anthropology.barnard.edu/profiles/lesley-sharp. More about Strange Har­vest: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520247864

This event is gen­er­ously sup­ported by the Pro­gram on Val­ues in Soci­ety (in the Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy) as part of the “Crit­i­cal Med­ical Human­i­ties” lec­ture series. For more info con­tact jstaylor@uw.edu

Eben Kirksey

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Eben Kirk­sey (CUNY Grad­u­ate Cen­ter): “Inter­species Love in an Age of Excess: Being and Becom­ing With a Com­mon Ant, Ectatomma ruidum (Roger)”

  • Feb­ru­ary 16, 2012, 2:00 PM, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions 202

Eben Kirk­sey is a cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist and sci­ence stud­ies scholar at the CUNY Grad­u­ate Cen­ter who stud­ies the polit­i­cal dimen­sions of imag­i­na­tion as well as the inter­play of nat­ural and cul­tural his­tory. As a guest co-editor of Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy, Kirk­sey has assem­bled a col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal research arti­cles from the emerg­ing field of mul­ti­species ethnog­ra­phy. His first book, Free­dom in Entan­gled Worlds, is about an indige­nous polit­i­cal move­ment in West Papua, the half of New Guinea under Indone­sian control.

In this talk, Eben explores the Ant, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of empathiz­ing with a species that is com­monly thought of as infe­rior to the human.

This talk is spon­sored by the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy, the Simp­son Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties, and the South­east Asia Cen­ter in the Jack­son School of Inter­na­tional Studies.

Catherine Hagan

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Cather­ine Hagan (Com­par­a­tive Med­i­cine, UW), “Com­pas­sion Fatigue: Work­ing with Ani­mals in Research and Other Settings”

  • Feb­ru­ary 10, 12:00–2:00, Sav­ery 408

 Abstract: A crit­i­cal aspect of ani­mal wel­fare is tak­ing care of the peo­ple who care for ani­mals. This work­shop will explore the issue of com­pas­sion fatigue and burnout in peo­ple work­ing with ani­mals. The pri­mary con­text to be dis­cussed is peo­ple work­ing with ani­mals in research. How­ever, the dis­cus­sion may touch on other set­tings, such as cap­tive ani­mals in zoos, or shel­ter work. This is not a dis­cus­sion about whether or not it is appro­pri­ate for ani­mals to be used in such cir­cum­stances. While a dis­cus­sion of alter­na­tives to ani­mal use is impor­tant, this work­shop is con­cerned with the urgency of min­i­miz­ing ani­mal suf­fer­ing for those ani­mals being used at this moment. Accord­ingly, 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 Act­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Com­par­a­tive Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton. 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 lab­o­ra­tory ani­mal med­i­cine and com­par­a­tive pathol­ogy in 2008. She pro­vides pathol­ogy sup­port in the UW Vet­eri­nary Diag­nos­tic Lab and her research explores stress, sero­tonin, and brain innate immunity.

Sara Van Fleet

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Sara Van Fleet (JSIS), “For the Birds:  A Gardener’s Jour­ney into Domes­tic Cat Territory”

  • Jan­u­ary 25, 3:00–5:00, Sav­ery 408

Abstract: Over the past decade, I have worked on my three-acre Vashon Island prop­erty to estab­lish it as a vibrant wildlife sanc­tu­ary.  The prop­erty is now home to 74 species of birds, 5 species of rep­tiles and amphib­ians, 9 species of drag­on­flies, and a host of other wild crea­tures.   The prop­erty is now also part of the King County Rural Stew­ard­ship pro­gram and each year I lead wildlife gar­den­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and tours as part of the Audubon’s Enjoy­ment of Birds lec­ture series.  My work with Audubon as well as with the Vashon Island Pet Pro­tec­tors involves edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the impact that free-roaming cats have on birds and wildlife and the impor­tance of keep­ing domes­tic cats indoors. A recent edi­to­r­ial in the Vashon paper high­light­ing the nat­ural beauty of the island men­tioned a local res­i­dent who was astounded to learn that Vashon is home to a rare native fly­ing squir­rel.  The res­i­dent learned about the fly­ing squir­rel after her cat killed it and dragged it inside.  Her seem­ing indif­fer­ence to this sad and unnec­es­sary act by her cat prompted me to write a let­ter to the edi­tor.  My let­ter sub­se­quently gen­er­ated a flurry of responses over a three-week period, many in sup­port, but some ques­tion­ing the valid­ity of my posi­tion.  This inci­dent has forced me to think about how I can be a bet­ter advo­cate for birds and wildlife (and cats too—as there’s over­whelm­ing evi­dence that they gen­er­ally live much longer and health­ier lives inside). Why does it appear that many peo­ple, even when faced with sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence to the con­trary, believe that cats belong out­side and that birds and wildlife are some­how expendable—or at the very least, are col­lat­eral dam­age in our right to allow our pets to free range?  How can we get our fel­low humans to extend their love and con­cern for com­pan­ion ani­mals to include a wider range of animals?

Sara Van Fleet, Ph.D., is a cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist, wildlife gar­dener and Audubon instruc­tor.  Her writ­ing and pre­sen­ta­tions on wildlife gar­den­ing have appeared in Fine Gar­den­ing Mag­a­zine as well as King County TV’s Yard Talk.

Temple Grandin

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  • Wednes­day, Novem­ber 30th

Dr. Tem­ple Grandin, designer of live­stock han­dling facil­i­ties and pro­fes­sor of Ani­mal Sci­ence at Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity, vis­ited the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton in Seat­tle on Wednes­day, Novem­ber 30th. We had two oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage with her and her work.

  • Spon­sored by the UW Health Sci­ences Admin­is­tra­tion and the North­west Asso­ci­a­tion for Bio­med­ical Research, Dr.Grandin spoke about ani­mal wel­fare in the Hog­ness Audi­to­rium, A-420 Health Sci­ences Cen­ter, from 4:00–5:00pm, with Q&A and per­sonal book sign­ing from 5–5:45pm.
  • The Ani­mal Stud­ies Work­ing Group also had the oppor­tu­nity to engage with Dr. Grandin at a work­shop on 11/30. The work­shop took place from 10:00am-12:00pm in Thom­son 317. At the work­shop, we dis­cussed Grandin’s lat­est book on ani­mals, Ani­mals Make Us Human: Cre­at­ing the Best Life for Ani­mals.

Josphat Ngonyo

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Josphat Ngonyo (Africa Net­work for Ani­mal Wel­fare), “Cel­e­brat­ing Ani­mals in Africa: Hope for the Future”

  • Novem­ber 15, 2011, 3:00–5:00, Green Room A, Allen Research Commons

Abstract: Come hear what ded­i­cated con­ser­va­tion­ists and NGOs from within Africa are doing to address wildlife con­ser­va­tion and ani­mal wel­fare chal­lenges and find out how you can help or even vol­un­teer your time and energy. Mr Josphat Ngonyo, the Founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Africa Net­work for Ani­mal Wel­fare, will be on cam­pus to dis­cuss these crit­i­cal issues. He will share com­pelling sto­ries about help­ing wildlife as well as his insights on ani­mals in Africa and the inter­de­pen­dence of human and ani­mal welfare.

This talk was spon­sored by African Stud­ies, The Clowes Cen­ter, Com­par­a­tive His­tory of Ideas, and Cam­pus Ani­mal Rights Educators.