Within a growing literature of animal studies and animal ethics, scholars have critically examined factory farms, zoos, companion animals, and laboratory testing. What remains underexplored are the logics of extermination deployed against feral or non-native species. The existing vocabulary utilized to describe non-native species often represents these animals as pests that wreak havoc on the eco-system, promiscuously over-populate, and spread disease. This rhetorical framing justifies a militarized relationship to these species. Furthermore, the debate over non-native species divides common ground between animal activists and environmentalists. If the world is moving very slowly towards less cruelty in the treatment of animals and a modest increase in awareness about the basic dignity that should be afforded to all creatures, there is a vast slippage in the case of feral and non-native species that merits attention.
We are looking for essays that critically explore the affiliation between humans, non-native species, and the environment. These essays will be part of a submission for an edited volume to be published by an academic press. We are excited to invite scholars from a variety of disciplines and epistemic positions, including thinkers from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds. 300-500 word abstracts should be emailed to criticalspecies@gmail.com. Interviews and reprints from journals will be considered.
Topics might include:
• Bridging the gap between environmental ethics and animal ethics
• Rhetorical examination of the tropes of nativity, exoticness, and/or invasion
• Media and mediated accounts of invasive species
• Ecofeminist approaches to overpopulation, fertility, and promiscuity
• Queer critiques of reproductive futurism
• New materialist and speculative realist interventions in non-native species
• Colonialism and critical geographies
• Economic imperatives and wild/pristine spaces
• Defining ecosystem harm and the terminology of equilibrium, balance, and harmony
• Questions of cohabitation and competition with endangered species
• Introducing, re-introducing, and restoration ecology
• Invasivores
• The biopolitics of wildlife management and/or hunting
The deadline for submission of abstracts is June 6, 2014. Please address correspondence to Dr. James Stanescu and Dr. Kevin Cummings.
Dr. Kevin Cummings is associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre at Mercer University. He publishes in the areas of rhetoric and media theory.
Dr. James Stanescu was the winner of the 2012 international critical animal studies dissertation of the year for The Abattoir of Humanity: Philosophy in the Age of the Factory Farm. He publishes in the areas of continental philosophy and critical animal studies and is the author of the blog Critical Animal.
