Human-Animal Studies Fellowship
This
interdisciplinary program enables 6-8 fellows to pursue research in residence
at Wesleyan University at the College of the Environment. Wesleyan University
in Middletown, Connecticut is a selective private, coeducational,
non-sectarian school of liberal arts and sciences known for the
excellence of its academic and co-curricular programs. Wesleyan's College of the Environment
was created in 2009 with a belief in the resilience of the human spirit
and a desire to engage students and scholars in discussions about
environmental issues and their social and political impact.
The
fellowship is designed to support recipients' individual research through
mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange among fellows and
opportunities to contribute to the intellectual life of the host
institution. Fellows should expect a
diversity of approaches, projects, and commitments to animal protection issues.
All fellows must be in continuous residence for the duration of the program,
May 28 - July 3, inclusive.
The
fellowship advances the field of human-animal studies in academia by
making it possible for scholars to devote time to their research, and
increasing the number of publications in the field. Thanks in part to
the ASI-WAS fellowship, the field has been gaining strength and
visibility throughout academia.
The
fellowships are open to scholars from any discipline investigating a topic
related to human-animal relationships. Selected topics from previous years'
programs include:
- Animal Ethics in Cold War Literary Culture
- Animal Experimentation and Animal Welfare in
Twentieth Century Anglo-American Science
- Animal Stories as Literature of Dissent
- Animals and Colonialism
- Animals, Technology and Future
- Children's Experiences of Animal Death
- Cloning Extinct Species of Mammals
- Ethics and Politics in Environmental Discourse in
India
- Food, Economy, Conservation, and Welfare in
Veterinary Ethics
- Gender Relations in Cattle Ranching
- Human Animal Relationships at the Duke Lemur Center
- Humane Movements and Pet-Keeping in Late Nineteenth-Century
England and America
- Legal Personhood, Animal Advocacy, and Human-Animal
Relationships
- Literary Representations of Dogs
- Mourning Extinct Species
- Species, Race, and Humanity in Nineteenth-Century
American Literatures
- The Animal Rights Movements in France and the United
States
- The Human-Animal Relationship for Veterinary
Students
- The Moral Significance of Animal Cognition and the
Irrelevance of Species
- Victorian Quaker Women's Contributions to
Feminist-Animal Ethics
- Village Dogs in the Rural Coast of Mexico
- Xenotransplantation and Black Market Organs
2013 Featured Speakers
In 2013,
ASI-WAS will open with a two day workshop on May 31-June 1, during which
fellows will present their projects. The workshop will also feature two
speakers, Carrie Rohman and John Gluck, who will give presentations on their
own work, lead discussions on each of the fellows' work, and offer feedback to
the fellows. Mid-way through the
fellowship, Timothy Pachirat will come to Wesleyan to speak about his recent
work and meet with fellows. We encourage proposals whose methods, aims, or
research topics might relate to those of our featured speakers.We also encourage proposals that deal with dogs, public policy, wildlife issues, or animal sentience.
John Gluck is a
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at University of New Mexico. His primary
research focus is in the general area of bioethics, particularly professional
clinical conduct and the ethics of human and animal research. He has published
dozens of papers on animal research and ethics, and is currently working on a
book about the work of psychologist Harry Harlow.
Timothy Pachirat is an Assistant
Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research. His research interests include
comparative politics, the politics of Southeast Asia, spatial and visual
politics, power and the sociology of domination and resistance, the political
economy of dirty and dangerous work, and interpretive and ethnographic research
methods. His acclaimed book, Every Twelve
Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (Yale 2011),
draws on an ethnography of immigrant labor on the kill floor of an
industrialized cattle slaughterhouse located in the Great Plains of the United
States to explore how violence that is seen as both essential and repugnant to
modern society is organized, disciplined, regulated, and reproduced.
Carrie Rohman is an Assistant
Professor of English at Lafayette College. Her research and teaching interests
include animal studies, modernism, posthumanism, performance, and aesthetics.
She is the author of Stalking the
Subject: Modernism and the Animal (Columbia 2009), which outlines the complex philosophical and
ethical stakes involved in theorizing the animal in humanism and its status in
modernist literature. She is currently writing about animality and aesthetics
in twentieth-century literature, dance, and performance art.
Fellowship Hosts
The
fellowship is hosted by Wesleyan faculty Lori Gruen and Kari Weil.
Lori Gruen is Professor of Philosophy, Feminist,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University.
Her work lies at the intersection of ethical theory and practice, with a
particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional
ethical investigations, e.g. women, people of color, non-human animals.
She has published extensively on topics in ecofeminist ethics, animal ethics,
and environmental philosophy. She is the author of two books on animal
ethics, most recently Ethics and
Animals:An Introduction (Cambridge, 2011), the co-editor of four
books, including the newly released second edition of Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Philosophy and
Ethics (Oxford, 2012), and is the author of dozens of articles and book
chapters. She continues to work on her manuscript that explores the
ethical and epistemological issues raised by human relations to captive
chimpanzees. She is also working on two edited volumes, one on Ethics and
Captivity, the other on Food Sustainability and Justice.
Kari Weil is University Professor of Letters
and Director of the College of Letters at Wesleyan. With Lori Gruen, she is
co-coordinator of Wesleyan Animal Studies and co-editor of a special issue of Hypatia entitled Animal Others (27.3,
Summer 2012). She is the author of Thinking
Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? (Columbia, 2012) and has published widely
on issues of gender, feminist theory, and representations of animal otherness. Her
current project is tentatively titled The
Most Beautiful Conquest of Man (sic): Horses and the Conquest of Animal Nature
in Nineteenth-Century France.
The
fellowship program is directed by Ken Shapiro, President of Animals and Society
Institute, Margo DeMello, Program Director, Human Animal Studies Program at the
ASI, and Wesleyan professors Lori Gruen and Kari Weil. Please address all
correspondence to us at: fellowshipapplication@animalsandsociety.org.Special thanks to our 2013 Sponsors: The Humane Society of the United States, the National Canine Research Council, New York University's Animal Studies Initiative, and the Animal Welfare Trust!
Meet the 2013 ASI-WAS Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
Meet the 2012 ASI-WAS Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
Meet the 2011 ASI-WAS Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
Meet the 2010 Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
Meet the 2009 Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
Meet the 2008 Fellows!
Meet the 2007 Fellows!
