CFP: Ecocriticism and The Animal Other (09/15/06; NEMLA, 03/01/06-03/04/06)

Theorist Cary Wolfe claims the question of the animal is "perhaps the central problematic for contemporary culture and theory." This panel seeks papers that address the presence of the animal in literary, filmic, and other cultural forms. Proposals energized by interdisciplinary and cultural studies methodologies are especially welcome. Also welcome are proposals that use the location of the animal to theorize new modes of ecocritical practice.

This session responds to a groundswell in contemporary theoretical and ecocritical practice in which scholars have increasingly begun to attend to the presence and function of the animal in literature, film, art, and philosophy. Recent work by Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto; Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal; Jacques Derrida, "And Say the Animal Responded"; Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory and the anthology Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal; taken together with recent films such as March of the Penguins, Eight Below, Winged Migration, and Grizzly Man, indicate that representing and thinking about the animal occurs at all levels of culture. As Derrida and Haraway remind us, opening up the question of the animal simultaneously opens up the question of the human. That is, by interrogating the particular ways in which the status of animal is assigned to an "other," one creates the oppor!
 tunity to investigate the operations of long humanist traditions that employ the construction of the animal to shore up the construction of the human.

The purpose of this session is to convene scholars whose work comes at the question of the animal from a variety of directions, thereby creating productive discussion that cuts across genre and discipline. In the service of examining representations of the animal in literature, film, and other cultural forms, topics might include: posthumanist perspectives on or theorizations of the animal, animals and technologies, the animal in/as art, animals and globalization, animality as inequality/animality and other inequalities, the companion animal.

This panel is co-sponsored by the Association of the Study of Literature and the Environment.

Proposals should be 500-750 words. Send proposal by email to: nmerola_at_risd.edu. Deadline: Sept 15, 2006.

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Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 19:57:38 EDT