Co-editors:
Professor Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University, USA)
Professor Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (University of Wollongong, AUS)

Animaladies will inquire into the associations between gender, species and madness. It will highlight how ‘animaladies’ are expressive of political and psychological discontent, how the pathologisation of human-animal relationships blocks empathy towards animals, and how the characterisation of animal advocacy as mad distracts attention from broader social un-ease regarding human exploitation of animal life. Understanding how the ‘madness’ of our instrumentalised relationships with animals intersects with the ‘madness’ of taking animals seriously, is a major aim of the book. It will not attempt to show where madness ‘truly’ lies, but rather how it is distributed, how it is made purposeful, how it is disguised (as ‘economic expediency’) and how it is made to work for social change or against it and how it is shaped as an insult, embraced as a zone of quarantine, or left as an undefined fear. We are calling for chapter contributions that may address the following core ideas (but are not limited to):

• Case studies that show how human/animal relationships are pathologised and how this impacts actual relationships with other animals
• the conditions under which animaladies can work for and against animal advocacy
• the function of particular associations between animals and madness/forms of ‘unreason’ and irrationality
• discussion of animal madness in the context of industrial farming and global capitalism
• the role that gender and race play in the pathologisation of human/animal bonds and connections
• cross-species animaladies in the form of public health paradigms
• connections between and intersections with disability studies, animal studies, gender studies and critical race studies.

Please send a 500 word outline (not a full chapter) of your proposed chapter to Lori and Fiona by October 30^th 2016. Please also include a short cv/bio (200 words max).

Email: fionapr@uow.edu.au
Email: lgruen@wesleyan.edu

TIMELINE:

October 30^th 2016: 500 word submissions due
December 1^st 2016: Editors response to submissions due
July 30^th 2017: Final Chapters due
2018: Publication