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Introduction: Animal Cultures, Laura Jean Mckay, Alexandra Mcewan, Clare Archer-Lean

Animal Studies Journal

Creative writing, transdisciplinary literary animal studies, and law-anthropology don’t often appear in the same sentence, but this interdisciplinary mingling is where we as editors meet in animal studies. We were particularly enthused by discussions that emerged during the Australasian Animal Studies Conference, held at the University of Sydney in November 2023, providing a rich source from which to consider the conference theme: ‘Animal Cultures’. Keynote speaker, Carol Gigliotti, wondered about the animal cultural research ideas that can be taken with us to ‘make lives better for animals, both wild and captive'.

Mateship With Animals: Writing Nonhuman Animals As Channels For Substitution And Expression, Carrie Tiffany

Animal Studies Journal

This paper reflects on my childhood fixation with nonhuman animals and considers my father’s relationship with the family dog as an example of a retreat to a traumatic wound. In my later work as a park ranger, I was confronted by the conditions by which certain nonhuman animals were categorised as those to be culled, or to be cared for. These memories, together with inspiration from Freud’s case studies, informed the writing of my second novel, Mateship with Birds. This novel is interested in what nonhuman animals might represent and where the divisions between nonhuman animal and human experience begin …

Birds Beyond Words: Fantastic Animals And Other Flights Of Imagination, Pattrice Jones

Animal Studies Journal

In ‘Nature in the Active Voice’, Val Plumwood called for a ‘thorough rethink’ of the logic of domination that has authorized both colonialism and the exploitation of animals (113). But this mandate creates a conundrum: that logic elevates mind over matter and cognition over emotion. If Audre Lorde was right that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’ (110), then we are unlikely to succeed in undermining that logic by rethinking it. We need practices that will expose the tedious nonsensicality of human supremacy while simultaneously awakening our capacities for empathy, imagination, and full-bodied ecological reasoning. Plumwood noted …

All The Animals: Short Fiction About Multispecies Families, Becky Tipper

Animal Studies Journal

The five-part short story ‘All the Animals’ imagines an array of animals who feature in the life of a fictional human family over many years. The story is inspired by qualitative research into human-animal relationships in families with children in Lisbon, Portugal. ‘All the Animals’ aims to offer a fictional ‘thick description’ of multispecies families in a particular time and place, but also to provide a reflection on the role of storytelling in human-animal entanglements.

[Review] Elizabeth Ellis, Australian Animal Law: Context And Critique. Sydney University Press, 2022. 390pp. Isbn 978-1743328514, A. P. A. Best

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Elizabeth Ellis, Australian Animal Law: Context and Critique. Sydney University Press, 2022. 390pp. ISBN 978-1743328514.

[Review] Susan Nance And Jennifer Marks, Editors. Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, And Us Environments In Crisis. Seattle: University Of Washington Press. 242 Pp. Isbn 9780295751429, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

163 [Review] Susan Nance and Jennifer Marks, editors. Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 242 pp. ISBN 9780295751429.

Forest Birds On Pasture: Meddling Marketing And Conflicting Cultures, Natalie Lis

Animal Studies Journal

Chickens are problematically embedded in the West and Global North as farm animals. Structures built for containing chickens including henhouses, industrial poultry sheds, shading devices and mobile poultry sheds, place chickens – naturally forest birds – into pastoral farming settings that are at odds with natural chicken familial structures and behaviours. I assert that structures built for containing chickens influence human–chicken labour. I support this claim through an investigation of chicken labour at poultry farms. I advance the concept of labour in human–animal studies by looking at labour culture from sociology and labour history scholarship centred around humans. How humans …

'Fire': An Australian Play Gives Voice To Animals Devastated By Catastrophic Bushfire, Rebecca Scollen

Animal Studies Journal

Animals on a grand scale are victims of climate change and of natural disaster. With no voice within human cultures, their plight can be silenced and forgotten once an extreme weather event is over and when media coverage of the devastation has ceased. The creative arts have an important role to play in raising public awareness of and empathy for animals impacted by natural disaster. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the Australian play Fire by Scott Alderdice (2017), framed by Animal Studies perspectives. The voices of the animals in Fire, as expressed through language – dialogue and …

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Contributor Biographies And Editorial, Melissa Boyde, Sally Borrell

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2024 13(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Contributor Biographies and Editorial.

‘Dresse-Toi!’ Perspectives On The (Re)Valorisation Of Nonhuman Animal Performers In Contemporary Circus, Franziska Trapp

Animal Studies Journal

It is the aim of this article to critically assess the (re)valorisation of nonhuman animals in contemporary circus. Though contemporary circus has declared itself to be an ‘animal-free’ artform, animals have been increasingly reappearing in contemporary circus performances over the past few years. In opposition to traditional circus, neither the presentation of the talents of nonhuman animals nor the demonstration of human power and dominance are the objective, rather, contemporary circus attempts to create critical and experimental artworks that function as social commentaries on the relation between humans and nonhuman animals.

This article is divided into three parts. The first …

[Review] Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa. The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research Into Animal Life. Oakland, California: University Of California Press. 259 Pages. Isbn 9780520342347, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa. The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life. Oakland, California: University of California Press. 259 pages. ISBN 9780520342347.

[Review] Irus Braverman. Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime In Palestine-Israel. University Of Minnesota Press, 2023. 362 Pp, Isbn 978-1-5179-1526-1, Esther Alloun

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Irus Braverman. Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel. University of Minnesota Press, 2023. 362 pp, ISBN 978-1-5179-1526-1.

'Pooped In My Yard And Ate My Grass Last Night': Wild Burros And Tales Of Belonging In Riverside County, California, Christian Hunold, Jennifer L. Britton

Animal Studies Journal

Riverside County, California is home to several hundred free-roaming burros (donkeys) who frequent the open spaces surrounding and between the cities of Riverside, Moreno Valley, Loma Linda, and Redlands, as well as the public parks, private properties, residential developments and roadsides in these towns. Tales of more-than-human belonging (and not-belonging) in Riverside County render visible how multispecies places are mediated by infrastructures of consumption and infrastructures of reciprocity. Where infrastructures of consumption generate callousness, infrastructures of reciprocity sustain responsibility. We investigate these dynamics by tracing how two geographically close but infrastructurally distinctive spaces frequented by the area’s wild burros are …

The Mouse Colony, Katerina Tsiopos

Animal Studies Journal

The Mouse Colony

[Review Essay] Animal Worlds After Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random House, 2022. 449 Pp., David Herman

Animal Studies Journal

[Review Essay] Animal Worlds after Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random House, 2022. 449 pp.

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, Editor. Posthumanist Perspectives On Literary And Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning And Teaching: Issues In Literature And Culture. 188 Pp. Isbn 978-3-030-76159-2 (Ebook), Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, editor. Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning and Teaching: Issues in Literature and Culture. 188 pp. ISBN 978-3-030-76159-2 (eBook)

[Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries Of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal From Plato To Haraway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 170 Pp. Isbn9780231194730, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 170 pp. ISBN9780231194730

Introduction: Critical Animal Studies In An Age Of Extinction, Eva Kasprzycka, Chloë Taylor, Kelly Struthers Montford

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(2): Introduction: Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Extinction

Fostering Refugia Amid Unfolding Extinctions, João Aldeia

Animal Studies Journal

According to Anna Tsing, Holocene resurgence, the multispecies work carried on to enable life among disturbance, and the ability to foster refugia where the living can recover from damage are crucial to oppose modern capitalogenic extinctions. I expand on this argument by looking at the geo-historical role that refugia have played (and perhaps can still play) during the Quaternary in nurturing the lives of survivors amid unfolding extinctions. Refugia have fostered multispecies life in harsh climatic and ecological times, which enabled individuals of different species to carry on the work of resurgence, because they have functioned as homes for refugees, …

Colonialism, Domestication, & Extinction: A Pre-Mortem For Our Ecological Futures, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman

Animal Studies Journal

This paper engages with Ghassan Hage’s concepts of ‘ungovernable waste’ and ‘generalized domestication’ to think critically about the sociopolitical position and futures of farmed animals in the context of ongoing climate and ecological crises. Against the erasure of farmed animal subjectivities, we posit that there is much to learn by turning to farmed animals as sources of wisdom, as unique knowers with lessons to teach us about extinction. We consider how Andil Gosine’s radical suggestion to embrace animality as a refusal of the civilizing discourses of colonialism, and as an act of solidarity with nonhuman animals, constitutes a critical step …

Economies Of Extinction: Animals, Labour, And Inheritance In The Longleaf Pine Forests Of The Us South, Nathaniel Otjen

Animal Studies Journal

Despite mounting critiques, extinction continues to be framed as a unidirectional problem where humans, through acts of negligence and intent, lead nonhuman species to their demise. In addition to universalizing the actors and processes involved, unidirectional approaches overlook the ways nonhuman beings participate in the extinction of others and the ways extinction continues to impact multispecies communities long after the violent event or the death of an endling. With its focus on how nonhuman animals experience and navigate violence, the field of critical animal studies can illustrate how nonhuman animals contribute to extinction events and how extinction unfolds across distinct …

No Going Back: Un-Fixing The Future Of De-Extinction, Jessie L. Beier

Animal Studies Journal

‘Extinction is a colossal problem facing the world’ proclaims the Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences website, adding, ‘And Colossal is the company that’s going to fix it’. For Colossal, this involves combining the science of genetics with ‘the business of discovery’ in order to bring back the woolly mammoth, which will not only help ‘rewild’ lost habitats, but also contribute toward ‘making humanity more human’. De-extinction is the process through which extinct species can be brought back into existence, often with the goal of reintroducing species to the wild and restoring ecosystems. While still in its nascent state, the science of …

It’S About Us: Extinction, Contradiction, And The Mourning Of Modernity In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Alex Ventimilla

Animal Studies Journal

Despite their worldwide viewership, popular eco-documentary treatments of biodiversity loss and the ecological grief they evoke have received scarce attention from critics. Addressing this gap in scholarship, this article posits that understanding the grief and mourning affected by these cultural texts requires attention to the numerous contradictions inherent to the form. More concretely, this paper argues that a thorough exploration of the contradictory nature of the eco-documentary, as a media genre that is imbricated in the modernity whose impact on the natural world it critiques, renders the genre into a critical junction at which to interrogate the cultural meanings of …

Not Another Plant-Based Documentary: A Critical Review Of Eating Our Way To Extinction, Melissa Plisic

Animal Studies Journal

Despite mounting evidence that industrial animal agriculture is a formidable force of climate change and mass extinction, many humans remain impervious to this knowledge. Eating Our Way to Extinction is a timely documentary that takes this issue head on. This film review is guided by Alexandra Juhasz’s explanation of media praxis as ‘an enduring, mutual, and building tradition that theorizes and creates the necessary conditions for media to play an integral role in cultural and individual transformation’ (299). Eating Our Way to Extinction attends to some of the most popular strawman arguments against veganism and is widely accessible. That being …

Sites Of Cultural Production In Response To Mass Extinction, Stephanie S. Turner, Evamarie Lindahl, Tara Nicholson

Animal Studies Journal

This conversation, mediated by Tara Nicholson, considers Stephanie Turner and EvaMarie Lindahl’s research in cultural representations of extinction and investigations of more-than-human forms of storytelling through an art historical lens. In response to Lori Gruen’s classification, extinction is a distinctive loss of ‘animal cultures’. It is more than biodiversity destruction or a static inventory of a species’ death. Nonhuman ways of building bonds, reproducing, teaching offspring, constructing homes and mourning the dead, are all systems of knowledge lost in extinction (Gruen et al. 2017). This conversation offers compassionate ways of bearing witness to species destruction and a space for empathy …

[Review] Carol Gigliotti. The Creative Lives Of Animals. New York University Press, 2022. 289 Pp. Isbn 9781479815449, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Carol Gigliotti. The Creative Lives of Animals. New York University Press, 2022. 289 pp. ISBN 9781479815449

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Contributor Biographies And Editorial – Dedication To Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023), Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Contributor Biographies and Editorial – Dedication to Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023)

Can Animals Contract?, John Enman-Beech

Animal Studies Journal

Animals are, or are like persons, and so should not be treated as mere property. But persons are not just non-property; they are contractors. They interact with property and with other persons. This article analyses the possibilities for a range of animals to fit within market liberal society as contractors from a legal disciplinary perspective. Some animals are capable of contract-like relationships of reciprocal exchange, and can consent, in a certain sense, to parts of such relationships. However, the dangers of the contractual frame, which is used to legitimate exploitation, may exceed the benefits. Some scholars have begun to explore …

Simply Caring, Lisa Kemmerer

Animal Studies Journal

Simply Caring

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, And Contributor Biographies, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2022 12(2): Cover Page, Table of Contents, and Contributor Biographies.