Call For Papers: Animal Studies Symposium

Animal Movements • Moving Animals

A symposium on direction, velocity and agency in humanimal encounters

Uppsala University, Sweden
27th and 28th May 2010

Call for Papers:

In recent years Animal Studies has underlined the significance of animals in human lives. The encounters are infinite and variable ranging from the mundane to the remarkable, the obvious to the unobserved, the euphoric to the dystopian. However, encounters are not static, and recent work has highlighted how important movement is to humanimal relations, be it the conflicts arising as conservation species cross the imperceptible boundaries or very real fences of conservation areas or the ‘socio-economic benefits’ of an egg from a hen that can range free. Furthermore each encounter has its own pace; in agriculture the rate at which animals are raised creates competing discourses of ‘good meat’ and speed infuses the ethical discussions in biotechnology. Equally animals are caught up in the globalised networks of production and consumption which materially and discursively circulate animals and their body parts as currency, capital or commodities. Consequentially, movement affects human imaginings of animals and shapes political ideologies. Thus direction, velocity and how various power relations converge to enable or prevent movement are fundamental to understandings of humanimal encounters. Therefore in this symposium we want to further such debates by bringing together current work on animal mobility and movement. In addition to paper sessions key note addresses will be given by Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir (Artist and researcher), Henry Buller (University of Exeter), and Nigel Rothfels (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
If you are interested in presenting a paper at this symposium please submit an abstract of 250 words at [web address] no later than 28th February 2010.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

• Depicting animal movement in art, literature and visual culture
• Moving agricultural animals
• Animals in political movements
• Movement within the laboratory
• Pets: mobility and captivity
• Trading animals
• Animal migrations
• Feral paths: The urban animal
• Locomotion in animal ontologies: discourses of movement in caretaking
• Animal liberation
• Humanimal encounters through play, leisure and tourism
• Relocating animals: zoos, farms, the wild and the spaces in-between
• (Re)presenting movement: animals as historical or biographical subjects

Further details are available at www.genna.gender.uu.se/AMMA or by emailing animals@gender.uu.se