cfp.english.upenn.edu

Animals in the Americas
Proposed Panel (not yet approved)
American Studies Association Annual Meeting
October 12-15, 2006
Oakland, CA

>From Jefferson's engagement with natural history to the sentimental hit series "Lassie," American culture shapes and defines itself in relation to animal representations. Yet these animal representations have until recently been ignored by scholars. Ecofeminism and posthumanism are now drawing attention to the fact that animal representations serve a range of metaphorical and didactic purposes, and function to establish gender, race and species as definitive categories. Scholars working in these disciplines raise epistemological and ontological questions that extend Lacanian notions of the "other" beyond human subjectivity. That extension of subjectivity also strikes at the heart of some animals' exclusion from categories of representation: invisible, animals in slaughterhouses, factory farms and research laboratories are unrepresented yet integral to constructions of American identity. This panel seeks to address from a variety of perspectives the role of Animals in the Am!
 ericas. Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words by December 1, 2005 to:

Colleen Glenney Boggs
Department of English
Dartmouth College
6032 Sanborn House
Hanover, NH 03755
FAX (603) 646-2159
Colleen.G.Boggs_at_dartmouth.edu

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Received on Sat Sep 10 2005 - 12:37:54 EDT