Art and Design Commons^™

Fictitious Ecology, Paulina Zuckerman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

My thesis project, The Mountain Fog, is a children’s picture book pitch that tells a light-hearted story of two dogs who must face an environmental disaster. In this accompanying critical essay, I break down the process of crafting a fictional relationship between author-illustrator, animal characters, and the environment. It begins through the context of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories,” which identifies seeing the world through two lenses - the Primary world and the Secondary world. From these terms, I navigate the idea of a fictitious ecology, an encapsulated anthropomorphic world governed by the creator’s personal experience with nature. This …

Nurture: A Campaign About Animal Adoption In The Philippines Through Digital Illustrations, Julianne P. Chuah

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

This paper focuses on animal adoption in the Philippines and how art can influence people to support this action. Animal adoption is not given much attention in the country, and certain stigmas are surrounding such topics. Additionally, some people prefer to choose the breed of their pet, so they would instead buy from a breeder or a pet store rather than adopting one. This causes shelters to overpopulate with animals, ultimately resulting in the euthanization of some animals. This research aims to normalize animal adoption through art—in the form of a campaign. The paper also connects utilitarianism to adoption in …

Mutual Rescue: Disabled Animals And Their Caretakers, Lynda Birke, Lori Gruen

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, we explore how caretakers experience living with disabled companion animals. Drawing on interviews, as well as narratives on websites and other support groups, we examine ways in which caretakers describe the lives of animals they live with, and their various disabilties. The animals were mostly dogs, plus a few cats, with a range of physical disabilities; almost all had been rehomed, often from places specializing in homing disabled animals.

Three themes emerged from analysis of these texts: first, respondents drew heavily on the common narrative of disabled individuals as heroes, often noted in disability rights literature – …

Human Nature, Mary Robb

Master's Theses

Human Nature explores my personal observations and life experiences through the use of my narrative ceramic sculptures. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to non-human entities, such as animals. Some animals are more desirable than others, but all have value and purpose. They exist for a reason. They all bleed. They just want to be. People are like that. I became untrusting of humans after a childhood trauma and began relating more to animals than humans. I observed many similarities in wild animals with my experience. They are continually on alert searching for food and watching for …