Australasian Animal Studies Association

Member blog: Siobhan O’Sullivan

I did a traditional politics degree, with little to no nonhuman animal content. When I got to honours level I was told that I could write about ‘anything’. At that time I was very involved in animal protection politics. I decided that anything could stretch to animals. I wrote my honours thesis on nonhuman animals […]

Member publication: Yamini Narayanan

Narayanan, Y. (2021). ‘Animating Caste: Visceral Geographies of Pigs, Caste And Violent Nationalisms in Chennai City.’ Urban Geography.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02723638.2021.1890954?journalCode=rurb20 What scholarly disciplines are most relevant to this publication?   This paper reflects on how caste and species as identity categories intersect in political life in India, generating possibilities for such intersectional thinking well beyond India as […]

Member publication: Muhammad Kavesh

Kavesh, M. A. (2021). ‘Sensuous entanglements: a critique of cockfighting conceived as a “cultural text.”’ The Senses and Society. 16.2:152-163. https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2020.1858653 What scholarly disciplines are most relevant to this publication?   My paper involves a critical re-examination of anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s famous essay on Balinese cockfighting. In addition, scholars interested in the study of hegemonic masculinity […]

Member blog: Roslyn Appleby

I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, but was lucky to inherit a passionate attachment to rural ‘nature’ through family holidays. Caravanning was a favourite activity, and my father always chose the most remote location he could find to plant our family of six plus the family dog, Sandy. On arrival, Dad’s idea of […]

Member publication: Clare Archer-Lean

Archer-Lean, C. (2021). Animal Representative Presence: Problems and Potential in Recent Australian Fiction. In J. Gildersleeve (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature (pp. 282–291). Routledge.  What scholarly disciplines are most relevant to this publication?   This chapter is situated in Australian literary studies as part of the new Routledge Companion to Australian Literature, and more specifically is […]

Member blog: Mona Quilty

My practice is based in learning through sculpture and performance. I believe the way to understanding my shared paths with other animals lies right in front of me: those who rest warm and quiet at my feet, those whose body is still by the roadside, those who sing on the roof at the fall of […]

Animal Language and Prairie Dogs – Con Slobodchikoff

An increasing amount of evidence shows that a number of animals have language or language-like properties. I summarize this information with a variety of examples in Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals; a short video on the topic is also available for viewing.    In 1960, linguist Charles Hockett published a list of […]

Becoming Animal

Teya Brooks Pribac and Debra L. Merskin How do we become who we are? How do we get to be the way we are within ourselves, for and to the rest of the world, and the way that world is (or is perceived to be) for and to us? In this blog, we first look […]

ARiS Reading Group, February 2020

by Greg Murrie Animal Rights in Sydney (ARiS) began in August 2016 with an inaugural meeting at the Town Hall Hotel, Newtown. The original convenors, John Hadley, Siobhan O’Sullivan and Dinesh Wadiwel, still convene the group. This animal rights reading group invites both academic participation (from tenured academics to undergraduates) and participation from the general […]