Australasian Animal Studies Association

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 […]

Extinction is Personal – Lori Marino

In 2018 I had a deeply personal experience with a member of a whale community that brought home to me what extinction means on the individual level. Scarlet was a plucky orca calf who was a member of the southern resident killer whale (SRKW) community in Puget Sound, Washington. But just as she approached her […]

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 […]

Call for Blog Contributions: AASA/Minding Animals

In support of the next Minding Animals Conference, entitled Animals and Climate Emergency Conference (MAC5, Sydney, July 2021), and to encourage discussion on critical aspects affecting our planetary communities, AASA is calling for blog contributions centred around the MAC5’s themes and subthemes listed below and at: https://www.mindinganimals.com/conferences/mac5/ We invite submission of blog proposals and/or completed […]

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 […]

Re-presenting animals: In conversation with Debra Merskin

Debra Merskin is professor of media studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon, US. Her research focuses on how the media and popular press represent nonhuman animals, resulting in species stereotypes, and how these portrayals affect the lived experiences of real animals. Sheep, for instance. Let’s start with sheep, […]

Inside the Grass Library

Inside the Grass Library David Brooks with Christine Townend, Blue Mountains Writers Festival, August 2019 David Brooks’s new book, The Grass Library (Brandl & Schlesinger) was released in early August 2019. The publishers describe the book as ‘a philosophical and poetic journey that recounts the author’s relationship with his four sheep and other animals in […]