Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Help me generate a list of graduate programs in Critical Animal Studies

I tried to start this once before, but it didn't work out.

Since I made that post, I have gotten increasingly more hits of people interested in this material. I think this is information that will be important for many people. Here is what I am working for: Graduate programs, in any discipline and in any English speaking country, that would be seen as being friendly to critical animal studies. My guess is that we can determine two different levels of friendliness. First, programs that have some sort of specific or stated affinity toward animal studies. Second, programs that have at least one faculty member that is interested in critical animal studies. (If anyone has any objections to these, let me know. If anyone has any other ideas, let me know). Please either post in comments or send me an email. Furthermore, please let me know why you are including the programs you are suggesting. This year's graduate school hunt is already upon us, but I want to try and get some sort of Beta list up by the end of this month, if that is possible. Then hopefully before Fall 2012 begins, I would have a stronger list up, and then I would try to keep it updated as long as the list seems relevant.

Other relevant comments:
(1)This is in no way a ranking list, and I have no desire to start a ranking system.
(2) Critical Animal Studies here is meant in its broadest, most inclusive sense. We can work out if there are issues with this after we have gotten the data.
(3) I am open to any advice or criticism in all of this.
(4) As always, self-promotion is welcomed.

Here is the immediate data I have so far. All the programs listed have faculty that are working on the issues of animals. The schools offering programs in animal studies, are obviously offering programs in animal studies. Also, Colorado State also have an animal studies working group of some sort.
I will certainly have some obvious and embarrassing omissions in what follows. Help me fix those. These schools are being drawn from things other people have mentioned in the past, or I have written down for some reason. This current list is completely devoted to the United States, because that is what I have. I will try to do one on Canada tomorrow (I have a lot less for Canada). I have almost nothing for other countries outside of North America. Send in other stuff, and I will expand the list.

Tell me what I missed. Who has schools where people are teaching and/or publishing on animals, and have graduate departments.

United States

Animal Studies/Animal Public Policy

Humane Society University (MA only).

Michigan State University.

Tufts University (MA only).

Anthropology

Cornell University

Classics

Stanford University

English

Arizona State University

Brooklyn College (MA only)

Colorado State University (MA only)

Columbia University

Northwestern University

PennState

Portland State University (MA Only)

Rice University

Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (MA only)

UC-Davis

University of Chicago

History

Cornell University

Northwestern University

Interdisciplinary Studies

Stanford University (Modern Thought and Literature)

UC-Santa Cruz (History of Consciousness)


Philosophy

Emory University

DePaul University

Penn State

University of Oregon

Vanderbilt University


Political Science

Colorado State University

Rhetoric

University of South Carolina (MA only)

University of Texas at Austin


Sociology

Colorado State University

University of Colorado at Boulder


Women's Studies

Duke University (Graduate Certificate Only)

UMass Amherst (Graduate Certificate Only)

8 comments:

Scu said...

I was just told to add Purdue University in English, because of Bob Marzec. Please keep the suggestions coming. I am mainly putting this here so I can keep all the information in one place when I update the list.

ej said...

Duke's Art History department allows you to search faculty by their fields of expertise, and one of the fields they list is animal studies. There appear to be two full professors with significant research interests in animal studies there:

http://aahvs.duke.edu/people?subpage=specialty&id=8481

This is a really cool project, and I'm glad you're doing it. One thing I would suggest though is that in addition to listing departments where you can work on animal studies, it would be nice to list, for each department, the animal studies-friendly faculty there (ie, the person/people who got them on the list). Research departments can be quite large (especially in English, with 50+ faculty in many departments), and an interested prospective student utilizing your list might be frustrated clicking through the often poorly-designed department websites trying to find the one or two people in the department who actually work on animal studies.

Scu said...

Thanks, Eric. The Duke addition is nice.

I agree that I need to add which faculty has caused us to add departments. I should have already done it for this initial list.

Anonymous said...

Cornell's English department has Laura Brown, some of whose recent publications, such as "Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes" (Cornell UP, 2010), focus on animals in 18th c. literature.

Scu said...

Thanks Anon., that is a good edition.

Hey, Eric, does your department have anyone working on animals (teaching/publishing)?

Craig said...

In Canada, you can work on CAS related projects in the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at York University. Less obviously (such as in my case), you could pull the same off in Sociology or Social & Political Thought. If you want to take a professional degree route, you could do a jurisprudence degree at Western and work with Pete Sankoff--presumably, but I'm not sure if it is the case, you could register in Theory & Criticism and add Sankoff as a committee member. One student is doing a dissertation on the political economy of pet food (i.e., not strictly CAS, but touches upon) in Sociology at Carleton.

ej said...

Unfortunately, nobody in my department is working on animal issues. The only person I know at Northwestern who has done any kind of animal studies work is Laurie Shannon in the English department.

Rodolfo Piskorski said...

I think you could include the Centre for Cultural and Critical Theory over at Cardiff University. They have a Posthumanism line of research there. I think both in MA and PhD levels.

I would also include my program. The Graduate Program in Literature at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, in Brazil; and the Graduate Program in Literary Studies at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, also in Brazil (there was an interesting international conference on Animal Studies there recently).

www.literatura.ufsc.br
www.letras.ufmg.br/poslit/