Eastern Kentucky University, home of the world’s only undergraduate degree in animal studies, will host an international conference March 21-23 devoted to “Living with Animals.”
The event is expected to attract more than 100 participants from throughout the U.S., and from Europe and Iran. Most of those planning to attend are university-based scholars; others work directly with animals or as independent artists. The sessions are open to the public.
The conference consists of two sub-themes: “Living with Horses” and “Teaching with Animals.”
Dr. Robert Mitchell, coordinator of EKU’s Animal Studies Program and co-organizer of the conference, said he hopes the conference “gets people talking about interdisciplinary ideas, helps teachers learn new ways to teach about animals, makes connections between people and animals, and makes animals’ lives better.”
Four widely recognized experts in the field will serve as keynote speakers:
· Dr. Margo DeMello, who teaches at Central New Mexico Community College, is an author, president and executive director of House Rabbit Society, an international rabbit advocacy organization, and program director for Human-Animal Studies at Animal & Society Institute. Her books include “Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature” and “Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection.”
· Dr. Francine Dolins, who teaches courses in experimental psychology and animal behavior at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, studies behavioral ecology and cognitive processes in non-human primates under free-ranging conditions in the field and experimentally in the laboratory. She has conducted research in Madagascar, Costa Rica and Peru.
· Dr. Kenneth Shapiro is executive director and president of the Animals and Society Institute and author of three books, most recently “Animal Models of Human Psychology: Critique of Science, Ethics and Policy.” He is founder and editor of Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies, co-founder and co-editor of Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, and editor of the Human-Animal Studies Book Series.
· Dr. Kari Weil, professor of letters at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, has published widely on literary representations of gender, French feminism and, more recently, on theories and representations of animal otherness. She is the author of “Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now.” Her current project is tentatively titled “The Most Beautiful Conquest of Man: Horses and Animal Conquests in Nineteenth-Century France.”
“The first day (Thursday) has one track of talks that is all about horses, and there are talks about horses spread throughout,” Mitchell said. “Also on Thursday are presentations about dogs and animal studies more generally. On Friday talks concern teaching about animals, contradictions in our ways of thinking about animals, conflicts between animals and people, animal subjectivity and experience, memorialization of animals, and ethics toward animals.”
A full schedule of the conference can be viewed at livingwithanimals.eku.edu.
Activities will take place in the Combs Building, John Grant Crabbe Main Library and O’Donnell Hall of the Student Success Building.
The event’s other co-organizer is Julia Schlosser, an artist and art historian who works and teaches at universities in the Los Angeles area, and teaches EKU’s online Animals and Art course for the Animal Studies major.
EKU’s baccalaureate degree program in Animal Studies, a cross-disciplinary program housed in the Department of Psychology, concentrates on non-human animals, their interactions and relationships with people, and the mutual influences that humans and non-human animals exert on each other’s existence, evolution and history. It incorporates applied fields, science and the arts and humanities, providing students with a means to become knowledgeable about animals and their relationships with humans from diverse perspectives, and simultaneously experience and learn from a strong, traditional liberal arts education.
Approximately 80 students are currently enrolled in the program, which first offered classes in 2010. The first four graduates of the program crossed the commencement stage in December 2012.
For more information about EKU’s Animal Studies Program, visit psychology.eku.edu/animal-studies-major.
0 comments:
Post a Comment