cfp.english.upenn.edu

Location: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Keynote Speaker: Nigel Rothfels, author of *Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo* (2002), and editor of *Representing Animals* (2002)

The University of Michigan Rackham Animal Studies Workshop is holding a graduate student conference with the theme of “Animal Representation” on February 8-9, 2013. Nigel Rothfels will be the keynote speaker on Friday evening with a reception afterwards, followed on Saturday by a full day of conference presentations. We welcome panel and individual paper proposals from a wide range of disciplines. Possible submissions may (but do not need to) address some of the following areas:

· Translation between the human and the animal
· Critiques or defenses of the companionate turn
· Companionate, cohabiting, and/or incompanionate animals
· Liminality of animals
· Anthropomorphism (as gaze, as strategy) and speciesism
· Animals and instrumentality
· Animals, rights, and law
· Disability and animals
· Animal affect/feeling animals
· Technology and animals
· Sites and practices of animal representation (ex. taxidermy,
reliquaries, zoos, museums, aquariums, collecting, hoarding, etc.)
· Gendering of animals
· Resistant animal actors (revenge, rebellion, uprising,
undesirability, untouchability)

Interested participants should submit a title and abstract (500 words maximum) to representinganimals2013@umich.edu by *December 1, 2012*. Panel proposals should conform to a slot of 60 minutes; individual paper submissions should be no more than 20 minutes long. Participants will be notified of their acceptance by December 15, 2012.