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Full-Text Articles in Creative Writing

Bodily Encounter, Bearing Witness And The Engaged Activism Of The Global Save Movement, Alex Lockwood Jan 2018

Bodily Encounter, Bearing Witness And The Engaged Activism Of The Global Save Movement, Alex Lockwood

Animal Studies Journal

The global Save Movement, alongside other animal rights organisations and practices, has since 2010 sought to bring the experiences of nonhuman farmed animals into the public domain from privatized, usually hidden spaces of industrial procedure and slaughter. One key mechanism used is to conduct vigils held outside slaughterhouses, where activists gather to bear witness to the passing of nonhuman animals in trucks, and to raise awareness of the suffering of animals to passers-by. Central to the practice are the roles played by emotional engagement and bodily encounter with the nonhuman animals; the movement is founded on a self-styled ‘love-based’ compassion …


Should We Eat Our Research Subjects? Advocacy And Animal Studies, Yvette M. Watt, Siobhan O'Sullivan, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey Jan 2018

Should We Eat Our Research Subjects? Advocacy And Animal Studies, Yvette M. Watt, Siobhan O'Sullivan, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines data from a survey of Animal Studies scholars undertaken by the authors in 2015. While the survey was broad ranging, this paper focuses on three interconnected elements; the respondents’ opinions on what role they think the field should play in regard to animal advocacy, their personal commitment to animal advocacy, and how their attitudes toward advocacy in the field differ depending on their dietary habits. While the vast majority of respondents believe that the field should demonstrate a commitment to animal wellbeing, our findings suggest that respondents’ level of commitment to animal advocacy is informed by whether …


Animal Utopia: Liberal, Communitarian, Libertarian Or…? [Review Essay] Wayne Gabardi. The Next Social Contract: Animals, The Anthropocene, And Biopolitics, Dinesh Wadiwel Jan 2018

Animal Utopia: Liberal, Communitarian, Libertarian Or…? [Review Essay] Wayne Gabardi. The Next Social Contract: Animals, The Anthropocene, And Biopolitics, Dinesh Wadiwel

Animal Studies Journal

It would be difficult to be optimistic in the face of the political challenges that confront us. Globally, we have seen stark intensifications of economic inequalities and social stratifications, coupled with the rise of new nationalist and proto-fascist political movements. The environmental challenges are daunting: we now face a future where anthropogenic climate change will inescapably and deeply impact the earth’s systems. As I write, armed conflict continues to shape human affairs, generating continued misery and displacement; and instabilities have posed the possibility of new global conflicts, including a renewed threat of nuclear war. For non-human animals globally, the picture …


[Review] A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015 Gonzalo Villanueva, A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015, Christine Townend Jan 2018

[Review] A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015 Gonzalo Villanueva, A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015, Christine Townend

Animal Studies Journal

This is a book that every student of politics would enjoy reading, and indeed should read, together with every person who wishes to become an activist (not necessarily an animal activist). This is because the book discusses, in a very interesting and exacting analysis, different strategies used to achieve a goal; in this case, the liberation of animals from the bonds of torture, deprivation and cruelty. Gonzalo Villanueva clearly has compassion for animals, but he is careful to keep an academic distance in this thoroughly researched, scholarly book, which is nevertheless easy to read. After each chapter of the book …


[Review] Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene Barbara Creed, Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene, Siobhan O'Sullivan Jan 2018

[Review] Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene Barbara Creed, Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene, Siobhan O'Sullivan

Animal Studies Journal

Barbara Creed is well known for her contribution to the field of Film Studies, as well as feminist thought more generally. Books such as The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993, Routledge) and Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (2005, University of Melbourne Press) established Creed as a leading international thinker. They also attest to Creed’s willingness to push boundaries and to take on challenging and controversial topics. In recent years Creed has turned her attention to the lives of nonhuman animals, and the multitude of ways in which humans engage with, oppress, and may learn from their nonhuman …


Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (2): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde Jan 2018

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (2): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Notes on Contributors


Provocations From The Field: Female Reproductive Exploitation Comes Home, Carol J. Adams Jan 2018

Provocations From The Field: Female Reproductive Exploitation Comes Home, Carol J. Adams

Animal Studies Journal

Sexual violation and reproductive exploitation happen to vulnerable bodies. After studying systems of female reproductive servitude and visiting ‘parlors’, exhibitions, and auctions where females are sold into captivity, Dr. Kathryn Gillespie of the University of Washington found relentless ‘sexually violent commodification of the female body’. Meet Carly (not her real name). Carly was torn from her mother shortly after birth, and while her umbilical cord hung from her, was auctioned off. She lived a life of physical and social isolation until her captors felt she was sexually mature. She was immobilized by chains or with a specially designed containment device, …


The Dairy Issue: ‘Practicing The Art Of War’, Melissa Boyde Jan 2018

The Dairy Issue: ‘Practicing The Art Of War’, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

: This paper offers several stories in response to philosopher Vinciane Despret and sociologist Jocelyne Porcher’s considerations on ‘dairy’ cows and work. These include stories from the cows in the herd that I have lived alongside for 30 years, a kind of auto-ethnographic approach; and stories and a few facts about the dairy industry in Australia. These accounts are informed by another story, told by the feminist philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous. Three works by artist Yvette Watt tell more stories about the lives and deaths of cows. One of my underlying interests is in the possibilities of narrative to …


Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson Jan 2018

Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson

Animal Studies Journal

This paper outlines my current sculptural research project bloodlines focusing on the ways in which dairy cows are entangled with multiple biotechnologies and the wider environment. bloodlines brings extant works such as fleshlumps, boobscape and slink, together with new works, to represent the dairy industry, the environmental impacts of animal agriculture and the biotech innovations of in-vitro meat and bio-fabricated leather. These works are linked together by a web of interconnected fluids: excreta, milk and blood. In this new work, I hope to make the links between the dairy industry and these extended concerns both visceral and visible.


‘Machine Milking Is More Manly Than Hand Milking’: Multispecies Agencies And Gendered Practices In Finnish Cattle Tending From The 1950s To The 1970s, Taija Kaarlenkaski Jan 2018

‘Machine Milking Is More Manly Than Hand Milking’: Multispecies Agencies And Gendered Practices In Finnish Cattle Tending From The 1950s To The 1970s, Taija Kaarlenkaski

Animal Studies Journal

During the last hundred years, mechanization has significantly changed the working circumstances of both humans and animals in cattle husbandry. In Finland, cattle tending was regarded as women’s work up until the mid-20th century. According to a common view, the proliferation of milking machines, starting from the 1950s, caused men to start working in the cowsheds. In this paper, I will examine how the agencies of cattle tenders, cows, and milking machines were constructed during the mechanization process from the 1950s to the 1970s. Special attention will be paid to gendered representations, and changes in the gendered division of work. …


[Review] Devries, Scott M. Creature Discomfort: Fauna-Criticism, Ethics And The Representation Of Animals In Spanish American Fiction And Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Critical Animal Studies, 4. 328pp., Wendy Woodward Jan 2018

[Review] Devries, Scott M. Creature Discomfort: Fauna-Criticism, Ethics And The Representation Of Animals In Spanish American Fiction And Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Critical Animal Studies, 4. 328pp., Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

Scott M. DeVries’ exhaustive overview of Spanish American Literature serves as a substantial introduction to Spanish American literature in relation to Critical Animal Studies and what DeVries terms Traditional Animal Studies. Motivated by the lack of Spanish American literature featuring in animal studies, his survey convinces of the richness of this literature. The neologism ‘fauna-criticism’ is underpinned by TAS and CAS for their ‘ethical advocacy in defense of nonhumans’ and for their theorising about animals which generates a ‘proper understanding’ of animals (25). The term is intended to avoid the ‘slippages of meaning’ (32) and the ‘baggage’ that has accrued …


[Review] Strange Mirrors: Review Of Tessa Laird, Bat, Reaktion, 2018. 224pp., Jacqueline Dalziell Jan 2018

[Review] Strange Mirrors: Review Of Tessa Laird, Bat, Reaktion, 2018. 224pp., Jacqueline Dalziell

Animal Studies Journal

In the latest text in Reaktion Books’ Animal Series, art critic and theorist Tessa Laird’s Bat provides a cultural history of the species, including a sociological critique of the place of bats in human history. Seeking to correct what she perceives to be inaccurate, yet unrelentingly persistent representations of these animals, Laird covers everything from bat biology, to the bat trope in popular culture, to echolocation and the figure of the bat in European art and literature. Whilst Laird does discuss the perhaps more obvious references, such as Batman and Dracula at length, she also delves into our collective unconscious …