The New Animal Studies

Holland, Sharon Patricia; Holland, Sharon Patricia

Decades ago, critical theory made the turn to Animal studies. From Jacques Derrida to Matthew Calarco, Vicki Hearne to Donna Haraway, this disciplinary turn often spoke to (human) being and relation, gender and ontology. Rarely (if ever) did this turn, which one could argue was also an ecological turn, consider modes of being or worlding beyond particular forms of embodiment. This panel attempts to undo some of the basic assumptions of the discipline of Animal Studies, by signaling a new approach to its historical and theoretical grounding. Each of the scholars on this panel has produced work that challenges prior assessments of the relationship among animals, human or otherwise. It works across genres – poetry, black ecologies, critical theory, juvenilia, animal liberation movements – to produce a radical re-envisioning of Animal studies as a field of inquiry.

In the wake of McKittrick’s move to assess a Black geographical counter-direction for critical theory and Wilderson’s paradigmatic afro-pessimistic approach to the question of being, several monographs have attempted to rescale the relationship of Blackness to the category of the human. While these studies (Zakiyyah Jackson’s Becoming Human and Joshua Bennett’s Being Property Once Myself, among others) think through animality and the human’s metaphoric relation to the animal, they do not come face-to-face with the properties of the non-human animal itself and (its) capacities to world. This panel puts into conversation feminist scholars of color who approach the question of “the animal” as interrelational, racial, historical, and ecological. With attention to creative writing about non-human animals in general and and horses in particular, the panel highlights the recent books of each panelist: An Other: A Black Feminist Consideration of Animal Life (Duke UP, 2023); Octavia E. Butler: H is for Horse (Oxford UP, 2024); Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), as it works to retool the founding understandings of black subjectivity and non-human animal life.

Sharon Holland's presentation focuses on the prevailing narratives among Animal studies scholars about the field's origins (something not covered in the published work) and how reframing such beginnings might be a game-changer for future work across fields of inquiry (Black study/Animal study/American studies). Chi-ming Yang's talk will take a deep dive into Octavia Butler's early archive and how it tracks both an ecological turn and an animal turn for scholarship on the famous science fiction author, with implications for our approach to archive and the settled meaning of Butler's oeuvre to the discipline of Black study. Joy Priest's presentation will toggle between her poetry and critical work (unpublished), mapping the presence of non-human animal life in the creation of ecological worlds for and by blackness. With its focus on a critical ecopoetics gleaned from Priest's work on African diasporic literatures and translations, her paper will map an ulterior ecological practice.

Panelists will present for 10-15 minutes about their work, leaving time for ample discussion among audience members. This panel incorporates a diversity of voices -- all of the scholars are people of color, and we come from different regions (mid-west, south, north east) and institutional homes (public & private).

791 The New Animal Studies: Calls for Papers