A&S Forum

Listed below are calls for papers, conference details and other information and announcements.  If you have any messages for the group please forward to Natalie Lloyd: nlloyd@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Reflecting On Our Relationships: Animals and Agriculture
A Multidisciplinary Workshop
University of Auckland, New Zealand. 18 July 2008
 
The Animals and Agriculture Research Group at the University of Auckland is pleased to invite your participation in a multidisciplinary one-day workshop that will explore relationships between human and non-human animals in agricultural industries.  This is a field of inquiry especially resonant for the cultures, ecologies and economies of New Zealand and the broader Australasian region. A range of proposals for papers that reflect on human/animal relationships in agriculture from across the disciplinary spectrum will be welcomed.  In recent years the interdependences of human and non-human animals have been subject to increasing levels of critical analysis by sociologists, historians, geographers and anthropologists, to name a few.  It is hoped that this workshop will provide an opportunity for scholars from the humanities, social and life sciences, working across the breadth of agriculture-related topics, to engage and discuss some of the relevant themes in human/animal studies.

Papers might address:
Cultures and identities in livestock farming
Veterinary and agricultural science and research, and their influences on livestock and farming
The formulation and implementation of animal welfare policy in agriculture
Developments in animal control, health, nutrition, diseases and biotechnologies
Relationships between livestock, farmers, landscapes, ecologies
Livestock economies and the consumption of animal products
Competition and cohabitation among agricultural, indigenous and ‘feral’ animals

Please send enquiries and expressions of interest to Natalie Lloyd (n.lloyd@auckland.ac.nz) by 15 February 2008.
 
 

Master Class: 'Recreational Trails in Natural Areas - Managing for All'
20 July 2007, 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Adelaide Showground, Ridley Hall Mezzanine Floor

A heightened environmental consciousness over the last few decades has resulted in a significant increase in land reserved and/or managed for conservation purposes in Australia. While land managers have actively sought to balance community aspirations to access to this land, there has been a gradual erosion of the status accorded to European cultural values in planning and especially in recreational provision. Land managers have often adopted narrow definitions of heritage and have typically not considered concepts of social value, attachment to land and issues of equity as they apply to different groups in the community.
This workshop will canvass these issues as they apply to recreational access and community engagement. It will start by considering contemporary definitions of cultural heritage and exploring the equity implications of triple bottom line reporting. It will then review current approaches to recreational planning and provision in South Australia with particular reference to national park and state forest areas. Different responses to walkers, horse riders and mountain bikers will be considered. Enhanced planning approaches that acknowledge heritage considerations, and improve equity and participation in natural area planning will be proposed. Many of these also have implications for
tourism and community development.

This interactive Master Class, with a national focus, will provide you with practical insights on how to:
• Recognise the broad set of cultural values that attach to natural areas
• Understand some implications of triple bottom line reporting for land management
• Understand issues of policy drift and equity in relation to recreational access
• Harness community resources to improve land management outcomes and community engagement.

Who should attend?
1 Natural area planners, policy advisors and managers from local, state and federal government agencies, forestry, recreation, heritage advisors
2 Leaders from the recreational trail advocacy sector (walking, cycling, horse riding)
3 Thinkers in the field of public policy application & social planning

The masterclass will be led by Dr Simon Cubit, a leading Australian authority on the management of cultural values in natural areas. An environmental historian and author Simon played a leading role in Tasmania in the 1990’s in groundbreaking work that led to a redefinition of European cultural values to include traditional associations in the context of the management of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. His expertise in public policy development and in articulating community aspirations led to appointments to a range of ministerial advisory bodies and to a specialised role as a consultant in brokering innovative land management solutions typically between communities and state government agencies. An active writer and communicator Simon has written extensively for national and international audiences on topics that include recreation, land use policy, environmental history and cultural heritage. He is the author of five books as well as a number of historical series for ABC Radio.

Fee: $110 Horse SA members $145 Non-members
Attend the Master Class and receive one free ticket to attend the “Horses: Our Living Heritage” Black Tie Dinner later the same evening.
For further information and registration forms,please contact Julie Fiedler, Horse SA
Email horsesa@horsesa.asn.au
Ph 08 8294 2460 or register via the Horse SA online shop at www.horsesa.asn.au

For more information on The Master Class and Dr Simon Cubit, please visit www.horsesa.asn.au

Web Link: www.horsesa.asn.au
Name: Julie Fiedler
Phone: 08 8294 2460 E-mail: horsesa@horsesa.asn.au

2007 Voiceless Grants Program
http://www.voiceless.org.au/Grants/Misc/2007_Grants_Program.html

The Voiceless Grants Program offers financial support to non-profit organisations, councils and universities for the design and implementation of projects which improve the lives of animals in Australia.

School grants (or “seed funding”) are also available throughout the year via Voiceless’s educational initiative, Animal Club.

Contact:
KATY WOOD, Manager - Grants Program, Media & Sponsorship
katy@voiceless.org.au
ph: 02 9357 0743
mob: 0408 603605

External closing date for Expressions of interest: 22 June 2007

Don Chipp Foundation 2007 Small Grants Program
http://www.donchippfoundation.org.au/dcf-grants2.htm

The Don Chipp Foundation is an independent research body affiliated with the Australian Democrats. We seek to challenge as well as to inform current mainstream views on issues of great importance to the Australian community. Our Mission is to promote the values of a civil society through active engagement in public policy debates on issues which impact on the Australian community. One way this may be achieved is to foster and sponsor research on issues related to the promotion of social and economic justice within the Australian community.

Grants from the Foundation may be held and/or utilised in conjunction with grants from other bodies provided the requirements of the Foundation are met.

In 2007, the Foundation is seeking expressions of interest for small grants of up to $5 000 to investigate one of the following contemporary issues:

Environmental sustainability and topics related to the social impact of global warming and climate change
Protecting human rights
Privatisation — costs and benefits
Corporate governance and corporate responsibility — what does it entail?
Needs of regional Australia
Impact of government policies on family and work
Education
Animal welfare
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues
The role of minor parties in the Australian Senate
Other research area consistent with the mission and vision of the Don Chipp Foundation.
External closing date: 25 July 2007

CFP: "Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Signification."
http://ece.uprm.edu/artssciences/ingles/cea-cc.htm

The College English Association Caribbean Chapter is putting together a collection of essays on the theme of its Spring 2007 conference, "Of Mice and Men: Animals in Human Signification." To supplement the papers presented at the conference we are seeking additional papers that address human views of non-human animals in literature and the media as well as in other channels and modes of human representation. We are particularly interested in papers that address the following topics:

1. Gender and animals; animals and ecofeminism
2. Cultural and political views of animals (including culture-specific
analyses of animals)
3. Animal rights and speciesism.
4. Animal welfare and species protection
5. Food prohibitions, vegetarianism
6. Animals and the discourse of science
7. Domestic animals, Companion animals, pets

Papers should be between 3000 and 10,000 words (excluding Works Cited), use the font Times Roman 12 cpi, follow MLA format, and be sent to cea_caribbeanchapter@hotmail.com in MS Word format by 15 July 2007 with the subject line "Of Mice and Men."

Please note: Papers may focus on Caribbean issues but this is not a requirement.

For more information please contact Vartan Messier and Nandita Batra
(Editors) at cea_caribbeanchapter@hotmail.com

The Voice of the Horse -- an innovative conference and new community designed to increase our understanding of the horse-human relationship at its most fundamental level -- the horse itself.
Iowa State University, Ames, and by LIVE webcast: Saturday and Sunday, June 30 and July 1, 2007
http://www.thevoiceofthehorse.com/

Presenters:
Jane Savoie * Ginger Kathrens * Marj Kittredge
Michael Martin Murphey * Linda Hogan
Phillip Whiteman Jr. * Kyla Two Bulls * Kim McElroy
Dwayne Tanner * Mario Contreras * Carmon Deyo

Registration fees:
To attend OnLINE : $35.00
(Late registration after June 1 is $40.00.)
To attend OnSITE : $379.00
(Late registration after June 1, 2007 is $429.00.)
OnSITE fees do not include travel, lodging, or meals, except for Saturday night pre-concert reception.

This conference is organized by Tapestry Institute as part of its Horse-Human Relationship Program, Jo Belasco, Director. Tapestry is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to collaborative research about, and education using, different ways of knowing, learning about, and responding to the natural world. All proceeds from the conference go to benefit Tapestry's research and education programs.

EDITORS:
Kenneth J. Shapiro, Animals & Society Institute
Stephen L. Zawistowski,The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

The Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science (JAAWS) publishes reports and articles on methods of experimentation, husbandry, and care that demonstrably enhance the welfare of nonhuman animals on farms, in laboratories, in wildlife/zoo settings, and as companions. The scope is inclusive of all animals. Feature articles should present particularly significant or provocative contributions to our understanding of animal welfare — new empirical data or reevaluations of available data, or conceptual or theoretical analysis. These feature articles are accompanied by several invited commentaries that critically discuss the contribution — particularly in regard to its implications for animal welfare. Additionally, the editors encourage submission of brief scientific reports based on less formal studies and observations on the ground, as well as literature reviews and conference reports.

Recent Contents:
Noise Exposure, Music, and Animals in the Laboratory: A Commentary Based on Laboratory Animal Refinement and Enrichment Forum (LAREF) Discussions. Emily G. Patterson-Kane and Mark J. Farnworth
A Note on the Effect of Controlling Stable Flies (Stomoxys Calcitrans)in the Resting Activity and Pen Distribution of Dairy Cows. Irene Vitela, Carlos Cruz-Vázquez,and Agustín Orihuela
An Hourly Variation in Zoo Visitor Interest: Measurement and Significance for Animal Welfare Research. Gareth Davey

GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTION PREPARATION
For administrative purposes, manuscripts are categorized into animal welfare issues arising in four settings:
• farm • companion animal • laboratory • wildlife/zoo
All submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed by a panel of section editors who oversee an even more complete review by a distinguished board of editors. All manuscripts should be a maximum of 8,000 words and written in English; the editors will provide help to authors whose first language is other than English. Because of the international and multidisciplinary source of manuscripts,authors are encouraged to avoid jargon. Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word by e-mail attachment to Kenneth J. Shapiro (ken.shapiro@animalsandsociety.org).
For more information, please visit the JAAWS page at www.leaonline.com/loi/jaws.

Friday November 30th, 2007
Deakin University, Melbourne Campus at Toorak
www.deakin.edu.au/events/ppp

Are pets an effective prescription for improving health and wellbeing? Increasing evidence from overseas and Australia suggests that pets can play a positive role in improving mental health, reducing social isolation and loneliness, and encouraging people to be more physically active. The benefits of pet ownership extend beyond their owners and have a positive ripple effect on the broader community, and potentially contribute to reduced burden of disease. With around 64% of the Australian population owning a pet, their is a wide but relatively unopened window of opportunity to incorporate pets into the way in which we plan communities, undertake health promotion, and forge common ground with other sectors and settings to improve health. The symposium will explore how Australia's love of companion animals might help us re-connect with our community and motivate us to live a healthier lifestyle. Featuring an outstanding program of speakers, the People, Pets and Planning Symposium will explore the relationships between pets, public open space, town planning, and policy and how pets can practically contribute to social capital and public health.

These insights will have direct application in policy for health promotion, community development, local government, urban planning and animal management.

REGISTER TODAY at: http://www.deakin.edu.au/events/ppp/

A unique perspective from Australia's prominent health researchers, featuring Associate Professor Mardie Townsend, Deakin University; Professor Billie Giles-Corti, The University of Western Australia; Professor Bruce Headey, The University of Melbourne.

Who should attend?
Local government managers
Psychologists
Pet care industry members
Public health researchers
Anthrozoologists
Veterinarians
Public health advocates
Journalists
Animal welfare authorities
Health and allied health professionals
Town planners
Animal management authorities
Park management authorities
Park users
Pet owners

Invasive Animals CRC Project: Review of Literature on Public Perception of Invasive Animals and their Impacts in Australasia

Social scientists from the Invasie Animals CRC have compiled a literature review covering attitudes towards invasive animals in Australasia. The aim of the review project is to 'improve understanding among CRC Participants, decision makers, and the public of community and public attitudes towards invasive animals and their impacts.' A summary of their main findings follows:

Animals covered in the Australasian literature include: foxes, wild dogs, rodents, cane toads, rabbits, horses, pigs, deer, goats, kangaroos, possums, stoats, bandicoots and flying foxes. The review observed that little primary research has been done on attitudes and perceptions of invasive animals in Australia. Studies to date have generally been reactive, and not well informed by previous work. The geographical coverage is patchy, and no national Australian picture for pest animals is available. The species coverage is variable, as is the quality of the work, with almost no coverage of perceived or experienced social impacts.

Perceptions and attitudes to invasive animals were found to vary with: gender — males are generally more likely to consider invasive animals a ‘serious’ problem, and more likely to support intervention and the use of lethal controls; age — older people are generally more likely to regard an animal as a pest (and a more serious problem) than younger people are; residence — rural residents generally perceive invasive animals as being more of a problem than urban residents do; species of invasive animal — eg animals that are capable of being companion animals or are large, attractive mammals, are generally considered more favourably than rodents and non-mammalian species; personal situation — eg attitudes towards species that are seen as a pressing national or local problem tend to be more negative than towards species that are seen as being less pressing, or farther from home; interest — attitudes vary between people with ethical or conservation interests, animal industry practitioners, conservation groups, scientists and health professionals; culture — certain species of animals are seen as companion animals in one culture but as pests and/or food in other cultures.

The review recommended that a national level survey of the Australian public's attitudes towards and understandings of the main invasive animals be undertaken. It also recommended that a review of the literature on social attitudes to pest control methods be done to complement the current review.

An EndNote database of references is available from the authors (contact [mailto:gerard]->gerard@fitzgerald.co.nz). The primary contact for this project is Dr Wendy Henderson (Detection and Prevention coordinator) wendy.henderson@invasiveanimals.com

This and other project summaries are available on the IA CRC's website: http://www.invasiveanimals.com

Opening of Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre, University of Sydney, Camden, May 2007

The University of Sydney has opened its Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre at Camden, New South Wales. The Centre is under the directorship of David Phalen and principal funding came from a Federal Department of Transport and Regional Services Sustainable Regions grant. The Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre will be a hub for research, such as in the field of wildlife medicine, with teaching and clinic facilities for veterinary and agriculture students. See the Veterinary Faculty's newsletter Rumenations for more details.

Call for Contributions
Working Title: Theorizing Animals
Edited by Nicola Taylor & Tania Signal

Challenges to existing paradigms appear in many forms and perhaps the
most recent, and possibly the most serious, has presented itself in the
form of the burgeoning field of human-animal studies. Contributions are
therefore sought for an edited collection which will address current
theoretical approaches towards human-animal relations. We anticipate
that this multi-disciplinary collection will include works informed by
social scientific, psychological, philosophical, and political
disciplines though literary and cultural studies perspectives will also
be considered. Articles examining any aspect of human-animal relations
are welcomed; we are not limiting this collection to an examination of
human-companion animal studies. We expect to place this book with a
major academic trade press.

Questions are welcome and should be directed as below.

Please submit papers or detailed abstracts (c. 1000 words) as a .doc or
.rtf attachment by August 31, 2007 to:

Dr Nicola Taylor
Senior Lecturer, Sociology
School of Psychology & Sociology
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton 4701
Australia
Email: n.taylor@cqu.edu.au

Please include a brief author biography.
Editorial team details can be found at:
http://fseh.cqu.edu.au/FCWViewer/staff.do?site=100&sid=TAYLORN
http://fseh.cqu.edu.au/FCWViewer/staff.do?site=100&sid=SIGNALT

Launch of Antennae, The Journal of Nature in Art and Media
www.antennae.org.uk

Giovanni Aloi, lecturer in Art History and Media Studies at Queen Mary University London (UK) and Tate Galleries has launched an online publication - Antennae - on the subject of Nature in Art. 'The magazine aims to showcase the best in contemporary art practice revolving around the subjects of Human-Animal Studies, Cosmology, Environmental Studies, and more. The publication is designed to involve a wide readership, so it is not solely designed with academics in mind.' The first issue of Antennae (currently a quarterly publication) is available and the second issue, currently under construction, will be available online on the 21st of July.

Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

Biomedical Theatres, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Tuesday 10 – Thursday 12 July 2007
Inaugural Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology Australasia Section

The world faces its sixth great extinction event, driven mainly by humans. Our region faces special challenges including: island ecology, rising sea levels, changing rainfall and land and water degradation. These issues are overlaid by the general problems of habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, pollution and over harvesting.

This Conference identifies the major problems for biodiversity conservation in our region, existing and potential solutions and links to the global biodiversity initiatives. Real opportunities can be found in the nexus between conservation science and policy-makers, managers and the community.

There are five major themes:
# Regional Challenges (particular issues for the world)
# Managing threatening process of universal importance
# Case studies of conservation in action, including biodiversity monitoring and assessment
# Conservation science and policy
#Conservation science and the community (non-government organisations, indigenous people)


See: http://www.biodiversity2007.com

Edited by Sarah E. McFarland and Ryan Hediger

Scholars increasingly consider the presence and function of animals in literature, film, art, and philosophy, while hugely popular documentary films like 'March of the Penguins' and 'Grizzly Man' and a significant number of animated films show this interest in film and popular culture as well. Some scholars focus on how representations of "the animal" as an "other" help to construct the human, whereas others examine the relationships between humans and other animals and how human and animal subjectivity are articulated.

This collection will examine the presence of animal agency in literature, film, pop culture, and theory to answer the following questions:

What do representations of animals in texts of all sorts (literature, film, popular media, advertising, and so on) signify about animal agency and human agency?

How do such representations call into question the distinction between humans and animals?

How do animals' actions indicate their agency?

How has human agency been constructed with reference to animals? What influence does this construction have on agency? On animals? On humans?

How do popular media and/or advertising make use of animal representations to encourage human actions? (Frontier Airlines, for
instance)

How can we understand the connections (historical, theoretical, or otherwise) among the categories "animal," "agency," and "representation"?

What political or policy ramifications should ensue from complications of human and animal agency?

How do representations of animals undermine or complicate the boundary that supposedly differentiates animals from humans?

Please submit 1000-word proposals via email to Sarah McFarland at mcfarlands@nsula.edu by May 1, 2007 as a .doc or .rtf attachment.

Accepted essays (6-8,000 words) will be due August 1.

Questions are welcome:

Sarah McFarland
Assistant Professor of English
Department of Language and Communication
Northwestern State University
(318) 357-6929
mcfarlands@nsula.edu

Animal Studies website launch

Annie Potts and Philip Armstrong have launched the website for New Zealand's first national research centre for Human-Animal Studies based at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. See:

http://www.nzchas.canterbury.ac.nz/

Summer Retreat Program at Shin Pond, Maine, USA, for Animal/Humane Studies

The 300-acre Wiseman Camp and Sanctuary at Shin Pond, Maine, is the site of a Summer Retreat Program for writers, scholars, artists, educators, and other cultural producers and knowledge workers focusing on animals and/or their humane treatment. The program, operated by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), invites all interested parties to apply for use of the property between June 1 and September
30, 2007.
The Wiseman Camp, just ten miles from the northern entrance to Baxter State Park, offers an outstanding atmosphere in which to work, especially work involving research, contemplation, and writing. A wooded retreat at the edge of a pristine and peaceful pond, it is a lovely, secluded, and inspirational setting. The purpose of the work retreat program operated by The HSUS is to encourage scholarly, cultural, and practical projects relating to animals, and to provide a site for enhanced productivity on such projects. Applications for use of the Wiseman property will be evaluated by an ad hoc committee comprised of HSUS staff members representing a broad range of disciplines and interests

There is no application form to submit, but the applicant must present:

· a statement of interest that includes relevant information on the project he/she intends to pursue;
· the specific work product that will be produced during the retreat period;
· details of the likely outcome or application of the work undertaken or product produced at the retreat;
· any applicable scheduling concerns or scheduling preferences; and
· two professional references.

Applicants may be asked to submit copies of prior publications. If approved, the applicant will be expected to cover the costs of transportation to and from the Wiseman Camp and Sanctuary, local transportation while staying there, food, beverages, entertainment, recreational activities (including admission to nearby Baxter State Park), long distance telephone services, remote internet connection charges, and all other costs connected with the applicant’s use of the property. The HSUS will, however, pay for local telephone service, electrical utilities, and routine maintenance.

Participants may take up to three household members (including spouses, significant others, and children) with them. Please note that the property is an HSUS Wildlife Land Trust-protected wildlife sanctuary, so companion animals are not permitted on the property at any time.

The house at Shin Pond has the basic amenities common to any comfortable vacation ”camp” house in the area, including all utilities and a full complement of furniture, kitchen ware, and other household equipment. There is a telephone line but no DSL or other high-speed Internet access.

There is convenient food shopping at Shin Pond Village and the nearby town of Patten.

The broad guidelines for the kind of work appropriate to the retreat
include:
*major intellectual projects such as working on a book, writing a chapter on an animal-related topic, preparing a case study, or preparing an on-line course in animal studies.
*projects of smaller scope and/or shorter duration

Applications should be sent to Bernard Unti at The Humane Society of the United States, 2100 L Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20037, or by fax to 301-258-3077, or email to bunti@hsus.org. Applications will be received on an ongoing basis beginning immediately.

The Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics (CAWE)
School of Veterinary Science, University of Queensland

The latest newsletter from the Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics is now available at their website.

'The Mission of the Centre is to improve understanding of animal welfare, and ethical issues concerned with animal welfare, through research, teaching, legislation and training.' For more information contact Nicola Cross: n.cross@uq.edu.au

Animals and Society II: Considering Animals
3 - 6 July 2007
Old Woolstore, Hobart, Tasmania

Registration is now open!
For more information and online registration visit the conference
website: www.cdesign.com.au/as2007 <http://www.cdesign.com.au/as2007>

Please contact Meredith with any queries meredith@cdesign.com.au

Feral Horse Workshop Proceedings
The Proceedings of the Invasive Animals CRC-hosted workshop on feral horse management held in Canberra last August, are now available via the IA CRC website:

http://www.invasiveanimals.com/index.php?id=Publications_Proceedings

This document was edited by Dr Michelle Dawson, Chris Lane and Dr Glen Saunders. A limited number of hard copies have been printed.

International Conference on Ecology and Management of Wildlife Diseases
12 to 16 November 2007
The Lakeside Conference Centre, Central Science Laboratory, York, UK
Wildlife diseases continue to make the headlines, with widespread implications for human health, conservation, agriculture and ecosystem health. Our understanding of disease epidemiology and risk assessment has improved enormously in recent years but scientists and policy makers continue to face considerable challenges in developing strategies for the sustainable management of wildlife disease problems. This conference will bring together leading practitioners in the fields of disease research, socio-economics, risk assessment and policy formation. Presentations are guaranteed to be thought-provoking, and debate will be lively. Make a diary note now. More information will be circulated shortly.

Major themes planned include:
management and control
socio-economics and ethics
surveillance, risk assessment and contingency planning
epidemiology
field evidence and experiments
conservation
ecosystem health and climate change

Nature Matters: Materiality and the More-than-Human in Cultural Studies of the Environment
Call for Papers and Panels
Toronto, Ontario
October 25-28, 2007
Hosted by the Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture
Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

Having emerged from the 1990s 'nature wars' that pitted so-called social constructivists against putative deep ecologists, scholars interested in questions of the relations between culture and nature (to use a convenient shorthand) have begun increasingly to engage in research that rejects both poles of that ultimately sterile debate: Nature may be a social construction, but it is pure hubris to think and act as if human beings are the only ones doing the constructing. For Haraway, the task of acknowledging and working with the implications of this observation about what she has called the ‘artifactuality’’ of nature is both scientific and political; for McKay, as demonstrated by his own lyric and metaphoric insistences, questions about nature, otherness and language are also poetic and ethical. For most scholars engaged in environmental work in the social sciences and humanities, the task is all of these things and more. How do we think and write about human, social processes and power relations in a way that also speaks to the activity and alterity of the more-than-human beings involved? How do we gesture, in our language and politics, to the ways in which nature is both interlayered with and outside of our cultural understandings of nature? What difference does it make in environmental cultural studies that we take more-than-human actors as our points of inquiry and conversation? In short: How do we make nature ‘matter’ in cultural studies of the environment?

This conference will address these questions by providing a multidisciplinary forum for scholars interested in the broad field of environmental cultural studies to come together to discuss just how it is that nature matters in their work. To be held in downtown Toronto, hosted by the Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University from October 25-28, 2007, the conference will include six plenary sessions highlighting the recent work of prominent scholars in various corners of environmental cultural studies ? including environmental history, cultural geography, ecological and feminist science studies, environmental politics and philosophy, ecological literary criticism, animal studies, and ecocultural studies - and concurrent sessions designed to foster both intra- and cross-disciplinary conversations in these and other fields. Selected papers from the conference will be published as a collection.

In organizing this conference on the theme of nature, materiality and culture, we recognize a large family of like questions that have arisen in different disciplinary contexts, such as:

- How do we in cultural studies research the influential complexities of other-than-human ‘actants’?
- What does it mean to consider nature as artifact? As landscape? As text? How do we read this ecological ‘archive’ in environmental history, or interpret the relationship between land and literature in a way that hears the voices of the creatures/places beyond the words?
- How can attention to the sensuality of ecological experiences enrich the cultural incisiveness of postcolonial and genealogical environmental projects?
- What can a reconsideration of the physical add to cultural geography? How is life (human and more-than-human) constitutive of space?
- What role might the natural sciences play in cultural analysis ? or, conversely, how can we understand natural sciences as particular cultures of nature?
- How do animals exist as subjects in matrices of power relations? How are their presences in human cultures part of a largely unwritten history of the humanities and social sciences?
- How can we develop a practice of language and/or poetics and/or ethics that respects the moments at which nature refuses its cultural construction, the moments of alterity that permeate human/more-than-human interactions?
- How can environmental justice concerns more fully inform, and be informed by, concerns about animal cultures or consciousnesses?
- How do diverse environmental cultures offer a challenge to Eurowestern bifurcations of nature and culture?
- How are feminist reconsiderations of corporeality crucial resources for the ‘incorporation’ of nature in cultural studies?
- How do we conceive of environmental studies as part of the humanities and social sciences, and how might this conception both complement and conflict with natural sciences?
- How can conceptions of and interactions with the more-than-human inform and construct
human conceptions of the ?good??
- How do ecological relations embody, reflect, and transform the social relations of
their production and reproduction?
- How might green politics respond to a reconsidered materiality?

The conference will include opening and closing plenary sessions for all participants on each day of the conference in order to provide us with a developing common ground for conversation. Our plenary speakers are:

Stacy Alaimo, University of Texas, Arlington (feminist science studies)
Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota (cultural geography)
Julie Cruikshank, University of British Columbia (indigenous studies)
Giovanna Di Chiro, Mt. Holyoke College (environmental justice)
Patrick Murphy, University of Central Florida (ecological literary criticism)
Mick Smith, Queen?s University (environmental philosophy and politics)
Cary Wolfe, Rice University (animal philosophies)

We thus invite proposals for panels and papers from scholars in any discipline whose work might inform, or be informed by, these or other views of nature ‘mattering’ in environmental cultural studies. In addition to the specific questions listed above, areas of focus might include, but are not limited to:

? environmental literature and ecocriticism: text and nature
? body practices and embodiments: nature, flesh and culture
? environmental and natural history: land as archive
? environmental ethics and epistemologies
? ecopoetics and ecolinguistics
? the implications of physicality for cultural geographies
? animal/human animal communications and cultures
? environmental justice, postcolonial, feminist, and/or queer ecologies
? sensuousness and cultural materialism
? science studies: (cross-)cultures of environmental research and experiment
? ecopolitics and political ecology: struggling into a landscape?
? communicating (with) the Other: media and environment
? addressing the Other: Derrida, Levinas and beyond

We invite proposals for fully-formed panels (three papers each, 20 minutes per paper, with a chair but no discussant), and also enthusiastically invite maverick papers that have no particular family of origin. Panel abstracts should include a general overview of the panel plus abstracts for each paper (all 250 words or under); individual paper abstracts should be no more than 300 words. All contributors should include a one-page individual CV with their abstract. Graduate student papers are welcome.

Contributions from artists, musicians, creative writers and performers are also welcome; these contributions need not conform to the three-person panel format. Please contact the organizers for further information.

Abstracts should be submitted by February 10 to:

Cate Mortimer-Sandilands Megan Salhus
Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture Doctoral Candidate: essandi@yorku.ca msalhus@yorku.ca

Faculty of Environmental Studies
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
CANADA

Presenters will be contacted in early March regarding acceptance of their papers. Final abstracts will be compiled for the program in late August and distributed in advance to conference participants. Depending on the outcome of funding applications, some travel-related costs may be supported for graduate students (these cannot be guaranteed). Please indicate in your initial application if you would like to be considered for a travel subsidy.

Report from Dr Carol Freeman, University of Tasmania, on the Kindred Spirits Conference, held at the University of Indiana from 7-9 September 2006
http://www.indiana.edu/~kspirits/

This intimate animal studies* conference, with keynote speakers Donna Haraway and Carol Adams and only 29 presenters (selected from about 200 submissions) took place over two and half days in the sumptuous Indiana Memorial Union building in Bloomington. The distinguished speakers and wide range of papers resulted in a high level of attention from the audience and often vigorous debate. The keynote speakers attended every session, with Donna Haraway often articulating the ideas she felt were generated by a panel.

Here are some of the highlights of the conference:

In the beginning, there was a clash between indigenous and Christian views in the Religion and Animals panel. Steve Russell, a citizen of the Cherokee nation, objected to the way he had seen Amish people treat animals, while Lisa Kemmerer challenged the established view that the Bible stressed the use of animals by humans. Steve emphasised the centrality of animals in indigenous stories, quoted Alice Walker - 'animals exist for their own reasons' - and Singer's comment that Western ideas about animals are based on hierarchical lines. He said, 'even animals rights and vegetarians dont reject hierarchy'. He maintained that we have a duty to nonhuman animals. John Nagle explored the significance of new ways of thinking about animals for the law. If animals have rights, such as in endangered species acts, can species bring legal proceedings against humans? Can we re-imagine ourselves as guardians of animals? In the following discusssion the symbolic function of the law was mentioned and Rhode Island's guardianship laws (http://www.nabr.org/AnimalLaw/Guardianship/index.htm) noted. However, many US states have been unsuccessful in implementing laws against bad treatment of animals such as pigs and wolves.

Panels on Species and Race and Hybrid Creatures delved into theoretical issues - there was talk of animals and 'affect' and of animals functioning as an 'interruption' to academic thought in the humanities. Colleen Boggs isolated four catogories of human and animal - 'animalised animals' - that are objectivised; 'humanised humans' who respond to tortured animals; 'humanised animals': for instance pets; and 'animalised humans' - slaves. The discusssion centered on the idea of 'species', how actual daily practices have everything to do with race, class etc and the need for animal-human intersectional analysis - not how animals have been figured, but how ideas are taken up: the multiplicity of practices that are produced by images. Annie Potts spoke about some people in the US who have modified their bodies to resemble animals and Mathew Carlarco gave a paper on Derrida and animal studies.

The panel I took part in, Economies and Geographies of Desire, began with Jane Desmond talking about art by animals; that is, the growing global trade in art by elephants, apes and dolphins. This was a fascinating presentation that revealed the intentional nature of this art - an orangutang painted and chose the correct colours for a dog he can name - and what this implies for the border that is usually maintained between humans and animals. Bart Welling's paper on eco-porn and the limits of visualising the nonhuman animal raised a number of difficult questions following the death of Steve Irwin several days earlier, and Germaine Greer's comments. A special event by Anima Visual Arts Studios showed the reaction of apes to the renovation of their living quarters with bright colours, silouettes of their bodies, and geometric patterns. The apes were cautious at first, then fascinated. In a panel on Animal Subjectivity Michelle Lindenblatt analysed the ASPCA 'We are their Voice' campaign http://www.aspca.org/speak/ASPCAmain.html and found difficulties with the central claim, although others felt that there was no problem as the blank balloons in these ads left meaning open to the viewer.

Two of the most compelling speakers were biologists on the Animal Pleasure/Human Desire panel. Marc Bekoff began his paper with the statement 'We have to be anthropomorphic - we have no other choice' and pointed out that animals have a point of view - they dont like to be treated badly. He feels that the image of the world around us that science provides in highly deficient. Jonathan Balcombe talked about the capacity for animals to experience pleasure and decided that if they have a quality of life they have rights and we have obligations. Also in this panel, Carol Gigliotti questioned the ethics of artists working with genetic techonologies and later, veterinarian Heather Narver spoke about the resistance to animal studies in the humanities by others in her profession. The conference ended with a panel on Animals and the Law, where it was commented that the law has actually been most effective when animals are regarded as property - and that property law is constantly evolving. John Nagle concluded that the law needs to be changed to reflect new attitudes toward animals eg. in managing wild animals and wildlife habitat. At the close of the conference, the 2007 UTas Animals and Society conference was announced and a flyer made available.

The beauty of this conference was the small number of participants and opportunities for discussion with keynote speakers and members of panels. The single session meant everyone was heard and panels were carefully constructed so that each presentation related to, or led into, the following one. Most of the disciplines involved in human-animal studies were represented and it was evident that there is tremendous interest in the field and eagerness to keep contact and attend further conferences. Thanks to the School of Geography and Environmental Studies for assisting me to make the trip.

*In America the field tends to be called 'animals studies in the humanities' or just 'animal studies'.

In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
Lisa Kremmer

Kenneth Shapiro of the Animals & Society Institute has announced the publication of the third book in the Human-Animal Studies Book Series - Lisa Kemmerer's In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals. This volume introduces the most important ideas in animal ethics and builds on a critical dialogue emerging at the intersection of animal rights, environmental ethics, and religious studies.

In Search of Consistency examines the work of influential scholars Tom Regan (animal rights), Peter Singer (utilitarian ethics), Andrew Linzey (theologian), and Paul Taylor (environmental ethics), and explores ethics and animals across six world religions (Indigenous faiths, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). In Search of Consistency sheds light on ‘the sanctity of life’ by means of an intriguing moral theory, ‘The Minimize Harm Maxim’, rooted in the time-honoured moral ideals of impartiality and consistency. This volume questions what it means to be human and challenges our assumed place in the universe

Lisa Kemmerer is an Assistant Professor at Montana State U., Billings, (Reed; MTS, Harvard; Ph.D., University of Glasgow, Scotland). Her recent publications focus on animals and ethics; shehas produced two documentaries on Buddhism. An artist, activist, and adventurer, Kemmerer has traveled extensively. For book order information see www.animalsandsociety.org.

Journal Announcement: ANTHROZOOS

Starting in 2007, the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) has placed its
journal Anthrozoös: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Interactions of People and Animals with BERG Publishers
http://www.bergpublishers.com/us/journals.htm. Anthrozoös is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal with a distinguished history as a pioneer in the field of human-animal relations. It is about to celebrate its 20th
anniversary.

ISAZ was formed in 1991 as a supportive organization for the scientific and scholarly study of human-animal interactions. It is a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization with a worldwide, multi-disciplinary membership of scholars.

ISAZ aims to promote the study of human-animal interactions and relationships by
encouraging and publishing research, holding meetings, and disseminating information.

Topics addressed by the Society and in Anthrozoös include:
* History and sociology of human-animal interactions
* Gender effects on human-animal interaction
* Companion animal behaviour and welfare
* Anthrozoological research methods
* Medical and social consequences of human-animal interaction
* Attitudes to animals
For information about joining ISAZ please contact Kathy Kruger
mailto:kkruger@vet.upenn.edu. Institutional subscription information should be sent to Corina Kapinos mailto:ckapinos@bergpublishers.com. For information on submitting an article please link to:
http://www.bergpublishers.com/uk/anthroz/anthroz_submissions.htm.

Kathryn Earle
Managing Director
Berg Publishers
http://www.bergpublishers.com

Animals & Society Institute Fellowship Program

The Animals & Society Institute invites applications for its first annual summer fellowship program for scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies. In the summer of 2007, this interdisciplinary program will enable 6-8 fellows to pursue research in residence at North Carolina State University. Fellows will have access to the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive, which is housed at NCSU. Tom Regan, philosopher of the moral status of animals, will also participate actively in the program. The fellowship is designed to support recipients’ individual research through mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange among fellows and opportunities to contribute to the intellectual life of the host institution. All fellows must be in continuous residence for the duration of the program, June 26-July 31, 2007.

The fellowships are open to scholars from any discipline investigating a topic related to human-animal relationships. Topics of particular interest for this year’s program include:

· human-animal relationships in science and technology
· animal issues in philosophy
· animal issues in legal studies
· the relation between human violence and animal abuse
· human-animal relationships in agriculture
· the role of the community in companion animal overpopulation
· the history and regulation of “puppy mills.”

Application deadline: February 8, 2007

Amount of Award
Scholars selected to participate in the fellowship program will be awarded a stipend of $3,000. to help cover travel costs, housing, living expenses, books and other research expenses.

Eligibility
Applicants must (1) possess a Ph.D. or equivalent, or be a doctoral student at the dissertation stage, (2) have a commitment to advancing research in Human-Animal Studies, (3) be actively engaged, during the fellowship program, in a research project that culminates in a journal article, book, or other scholarly presentation, and (4) submit a follow-up report six months after the fellowship’s completion.

Application
Applicants should email electronic copies of the following items to
fellowshipapplication@animalsandsociety.org:
· Cover sheet with the applicant’s name, mailing address to be used for future correspondence, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address, present rank and institution name, date Ph.D. received or expected, citizenship status, title of project, history of fellowships and grants received during the past five years.
· Project proposal of two to three pages (single-spaced) that describes the project and indicates work completed on the project to date. As the description will be considered by a panel of scholars from a variety of disciplines, it should be written for non-specialists.
· Curriculum vitae of no more than three pages.

In addition, applicants must also send two letters of recommendation to:

Committee on Fellowships, Animals & Society Institute, 403 McCauley Street,
Washington Grove MD 20880.

Applicants are responsible for contacting referees and supplying them with a description of the project.

Selection Process
The selection committee will include members from a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Applications will be evaluated on the contribution that the completed project will make to Human-Animal studies, the qualifications of the applicant to complete the research, the project’s relation to the resources and host faculty of the sponsoring institution, and how well individual applicants’projects complement each other.

Applicants will be notified by e-mail and letter in March 2007.

The fellowship program will be directed by Ken Shapiro, editor of Society and Animals. Please address all correspondence to him at the following address:
Committee on Fellowships
Animals & Society Institute
403 McCauley Street
Washington Grove MD 20880
ken.shapiro@animalsandsociety.org
(301) 963-4751
www.animalsandsociety.org

CALL FOR PAPERS
THINKING ABOUT ANIMALS: DOMINATION, CAPTIVITY, LIBERATION
CONFERENCE AT BROCK UNIVERSITY,
ST.CATHERINES, ONTARIO, CANADA
MARCH 15-16, 2007
To celebrate the creation of a new Concentration and Minor in Critical Animal Studies, and as part of our commitment to engaged scholarship directed towards social justice, the Department of Sociology at Brock University is organizing a conference on the theme of ‘Domination, Captivity, Liberation’ to be held at Brock campus on March 15-16, 2007. We are pleased to co-sponsor this event with Niagara Action for Animals, a local non- profit, all-volunteer charity devoted to ending all forms of animal cruelty through education, direct action and legitimate protest.

We are all at a critical moment. The existing order of global capitalism and industrialization is unsustainable, directly linked with global warming and massive extinction of species. New social movements offer an alternative future and require a different consciousness about our place in the world. The animal liberation movement, once dismissed as a ‘single-issue’ cause is increasingly recognized as the logical next step in a broader emancipatory struggle. As Steve Best states in his essay ‘The New Abolitionism: Capitalism, Slavery and Human Emancipation’:

Animal liberation is not an alien concept to modern culture; rather it builds on the most progressive ethical and political values Westerners have devised in the last two hundred years --those of equality, democracy, and rights as it carries them to their logicalconclusion. The next great step in moral evolution is to abolish the last acceptable form of slavery that subjugates the vast majority of species on this planet to the violent whim of one. Moral advance today involves sending human supremacy to the same refuse bin that society earlier discarded much male supremacy and white supremacy. Animal liberation requires that people transcend the complacent boundaries of humanism inorder to make a qualitative leap in ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity. (http://www.drstevebest.org/papers/vegenvani/new_abolitionism.php)

While Best and others recognize animal advocacy as a social movement that should be seen in the context of other challenges to corporate globalization and struggles for social justice, a growing number of universities have been adding courses that explore various dimensions of our relationships with other animals. At the same time, deep divisions have developed within the animal liberation movement itself, as outlinedin Gary Francione’s ‘Rain Without Thunder’. Many of those in the animal rights movement, such as Peter Singer, whose Animal Liberation is widely credited as a key text in the movement, have moved to reformist positions that embrace ‘humane slaughter’ while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals applauds McDonald’s hamburger corporation and kills pound animals. Meanwhile, the animal exploitation industries and government have imposed new laws such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in the USA.

This conference is intended as an opportunity for discussion of these developments. The conference is open to all and we invite participation from academics and activists. Those who register in advance will have the option of purchasing vegan meals. Proposals for papers and panels are invited and activist groups may request a table for display of their material. Participants will discuss a wide variety of issues, such as the following:

• Spectres of speciesism: philosophical and ideological legitimisations for exploitation of animals and ethical challenges to these legitimizations
• Capitalism, ecological crisis and animal liberation
• Representing animals: images of captivity, images of liberation
• Manufacturing Consent: animals in advertising
• Captivity industries and their prisoners
• Animals as persons, property and commodities
• Animals and the law
• Boundaries, Empathy and Human Relationships with Other Animals
• Us/Not Us: the imprisoning and liberating of apes -The Great Ape Project and equality beyond humanity; Release and Restitution; The PrimateFreedom Project
• Emotions and sentience and why they matter
• Lessons from ethology
• Cross-cultural perspectives
• ‘The Case for Comparing Atrocities’: Factory farms and Holocaust imagery
• Blowback: unintended consequences of domination and captivity: BSE, Avian influenza, environmental degradation, dangers to human health, psychological effects
• Sanctuaries
• Corporate and government responses to animal liberation
• ‘Green is the New Red’: Constructing the Ecoterrorist Menace
• ‘Terrorists or Freedom Fighters’? Animal liberation and social justice
• Debates on the future of the animal rights movement
• The nature of liberation: welfare vs. abolition
• Humane slaughter? Cage-free eggs? Corporate compassion?
• Veganism as direct action

Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2007
Proposals will be reviewed by the organizing committee and those whose abstracts have been accepted will be notified by email. Please indicate any special needs and/or equipment requests well in advance. Please submit an abstract of approximately 500 words to: animalconference@brocku.ca

Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) Animal Welfare Research Training Scholarship

As part of its endeavours to encourage high quality science likely to lead to substantial advances in animal welfare, UFAW is running a scheme to award UFAW Animal Welfare Research Training Scholarships to enable promising veterinary or science graduates to undertake three-year programmes of research leading to degrees at the doctorate level within the British Isles. UFAW would like particularly to encourage applications in the following fields:

· development of methodologies aimed at elucidation of the neurological basis of sentience in animals
· developments in approaches to alleviating welfare problems in farmed, companion and/or laboratory animals through breeding
· developments in detection and alleviation of pain
· development of methods of welfare / quality of life assessment


UFAW does not wish to exclude potentially valuable projects in other aspects of animal welfare science and applications for work in other areas will also be considered.

The stipend for science graduates will be £16,283 rising to £19,230 for the third year (London weighting £18,211 rising to £21,507 for the third year) and for veterinary graduates, £17,097 rising to £20,192 for the third year (London weighting £19,121 rising to £22,583 for the third year). In addition, research costs up to £10,000 pa and approved tuition fees up to £3235 pa will be met (Applications for tuition fees in excess of this amount may be considered). Click here for further details.

Application for this award will be a two-stage process. Initially, supervisors are required to submit a brief Concept Note by 1st December 2006.

Further details and an application form can be found by visiting the UFAW website http://www.ufaw.org.uk/AWResearchtrainingscholarship.php

Universities Federation for Animal Welfare
The Old School, Brewhouse Hill, Wheathampstead, Herts AL4 8AN, UK
Email: ufaw@ufaw.org.uk
Direct tel/fax: +(0)1276 500880
Office: +(0)1582 831818 (tel), 831414 (fax)
UK Registered Charity Number: 207996

The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) is an independent registered UK charity that works to develop and promote improvements in the welfare of all animals through scientific and educational activity worldwide.

Science in the service of animal welfare

GENERAL EDITOR SOUGHT FOR ENCYCLOPEDIA ON ANIMALS IN HUMAN HISTORY
M.E. Sharpe, an academic, reference, and educational publisher, is
developing an encyclopedia on the role of animals in human history. Organized in an a-to-z format, the book will cover the interaction of humans and animals—both domesticated and non-domesticated—throughout global human pre-history and history. The book will be aimed at middle and high school students. The length and precise contents of the book will be determined by the editor, in consultation with the publisher.
The publisher is currently looking for a general editor for the
project. The general editor's tasks include: developing a table of
contents, soliciting contributing scholars, and editing for content.
Basic fact-checking, copy-editing, and indexing is handled by the
publisher. The general editor will be paid an advance against standard royalties.

If you are interested in discussing this project further, please
contact acquisitions editor James Ciment at james.ciment@comcast.net

CALL FOR PAPERS: HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS IN HISTORY, for the 2008 Organization of American Historians meeting
(March 27-31, 2008, New York City).
Deadline: November 15, 2006 (the final OAH deadline is Jan. 15, 2007)

Susan Nance of the University of Guelph is looking to put together a panel for the 2008 OAH on human-animal relationships. She writes:

The theme for the OAH meeting that year is arranged around overcoming
the fragmentation in US history and attempting to develop a synthesis and connections between subfields. So, I propose a panel that investigates the common history of humans and animals, looking for ways that historical animals and their behavior can be used to address some of the big questions in US history. The hope (for me at least!) is that eventually animals can be historicized as actors such that they become indispensable to any synthesis of American history. I am open to papers on any time period, region or species. For my part, I would like to present some of my research on the role of animals as actors in the history of American capitalism, by way of the role of animals in the entertainment business ca. 1870-1930.
Please send along your ideas/proposals by email by November 15, 2006.
(The final OAH deadline is January 15, 2007, but they are currently
accepting panel proposals already, so the sooner the better!)

Susan Nance
Department of History
University of Guelph
snance@uoguelph.ca

Animals and Society II: Considering Animals
3 - 6 July 2007
Old Woolstore, Hobart, Tasmania
http://www.cdesign.com.au/animals2007/

Following on the success of the inaugural Animals and Society Conference held at the University of Western Australia in 2005, the Animals and Society Study Group (Australia) and the University of Tasmania are pleased to be hosting Animals and Society II: Considering Animals.

The conference aims to bring together researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines spanning the humanities, social sciences and sciences, as well as representatives from non-government organisations, industry and government, to examine the relationships between animals and humans from social, cultural, historical, geographical, environmental, moral, legal and political perspectives.

The burgeoning academic field of human-animal studies is rapidly gaining international prominence. Considering Animals provides an important opportunity for researchers to share knowledge and experience in this exciting field and will encourage a critical approach to our relations with non-human animals. We see this conference as consolidating the field of human-animal studies in Australia and particularly welcome contributions from new disciplinary areas.

Further details and call for papers available at http://www.cdesign.com.au/animals2007/

focas is back with our sixth volume, Regional Animalities: Humans &
Animal Relations in Southeast Asia. For this volume, we are
collaborating with Documenta 12, the international contemporary art
event based in Kassel, Germany. Both the publication as a whole and
selected articles from the forthcoming issue will be featured in
documenta 12 magazines, the online editorial project bringing together
independent publishing initiatives on art and culture from around the
globe. (For more information on Documenta, refer to
http://www.documenta.de.)

In this context we are sending out a call for visual or textual
responses from practitioners, scholars, writers and activists, to the
themed sections detailed below.

Please send a maximum 500-word proposal or a file with maximum 5
low-resolution images to focas@pacific.net.sg.

Deadline for submissions: 15th November 06.
Deadline for final input: 1st March 07.

I. Main Themed Section: Regional Animalities

The main theme for this sixth issue in the focas publication series
concerns ways in which human animal exchanges and relationships are
imagined, represented and performed in a range of different artistic
and cultural political contexts—primarily, but not exclusively, in
Singapore and Southeast Asia.

We encourage input from art writers, practitioners and activists, as
well as writers from the social and natural sciences.

Proposals may choose to respond to, reject or transcend the following:

· How do a multiplicity of real and imagined beasts brush, buzz,
slink, stink and scuttle in and out of the everyday fantasies and
signifying practices of contemporary Southeast Asian societies?

· How are these phantoms and presences projected through
human-human exchanges?

· How do human-animal and animal-animal exchanges subvert,
rupture, invade and expand upon human symbolic orders and signifying
practices?

· Which animals are eaten? Which are adored? Which animals are
feared? Which animals are expelled? Which animals are sacred? Which
profane? Which animals persist? Which animals are lost?

· What historical/“indigenous” assumptions, representations,
embodiments of other living creatures exist in human cultiures in the
region? How do these relate to contemporary animal rights discourses?

· How do vernacular attitudes to animals bleed into “shark tales”,
“Hello Kitties” and other animated icons?

· How have various creatures been represented and received in
global and vernacular, experimentary and commercial cultural
production, such as visual art, film, television, animation,
advertising and fashion?

· How do animals remap/reinvent human territories, spaces and
places, waters and skies, cities and kampungs, skyscrapers and rubbish
mountains?

· How have recent outbreaks and invocations of SARS, bird flu and
dengue fever recast human animal relations in the region?

II. Art & Activism in Singapore 2004–6:

Artists, Animals, Transients & The Death Penalty

In the past two years in Singapore, three civil society movements have
gained considerable visibility in an otherwise infamously disciplined
social, political and media arena:

· The animal welfare movement, buoyed by the public outcry over
the Singapore Government’s culling of stray cats during the SARS
outbreak in 2003.

· A movement to lobby for basic labour and health rights for
transient workers.

· Artist and activist mobilisations against the mandatory death
penalty for drug trafficking in Singapore—a hitherto no-go area for
activist groups as it was considered just too difficult an issue to
tackle.

A number of the same actors, musicians, artists, are active in all
three camps. In this section we are soliciting and commissioning reports on
artist/activist involvement in all three issues.

There are indeed links between the treatment of migrant workers,
hoarded onto open trucks like livestock, and a
dehumanisation/animalisation process in the ways in which death row
prisoners (a number of whom are migrant drug peddlers) are impounded
and eventually hanged.

But what is also immediately apparent with these juxtapositions is how
juicy, pleasurable, rich and evocative the writing and making of art
about animals, conservation and animal welfare is, in contrast to a
tired greyness of writing on labour and the absolute authority of
(human) death, which overshadows attempts to respond to the death
penalty in Singapore in art or theory.

Indeed, there have been discussions in the editorial as to whether we
even should be speaking of the death penalty in an art context. However
reflexively and sensitively we handle this, are we inevitably just
going to fuel the ravenous hunger of contemporary art and theory for
the latest trauma of the human Other.

III. focas on Censorship

focas will be continuing to debate and document instances of censorship
in the art and writing in Southeast Asia. This section will be compiled
in collaboration with the international organisation Reporters Without
Borders.

focas review process

After initial selection, papers for focasare reviewed via a process of
transparent communication between writers, the focas editorial board
and guest editors for specific themed issues.

For more information, contact Lucy Davis,
Assistant Professor, Art, Design & Media (ADM)
Editor, Forum on Contemporary Art & Society (FOCAS)

Email
NTU: lucydavis@ntu.edu.sg
FOCAS: focas@pacific.net.sg

Modern Mask

The first issue of 'Modern Mask', a new online journal of the arts, has a film and tv section that includes work by various scholars on animal films and animal studies. The journal can be found at: http://www.modernmask.org

'Animal Studies Aotearoa' is a network of scholars in the field of human-animal studies based in the School of Culture, Literature and Society (CULS) at the University of Canterbury. The group is soon to establish the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, and currently have research and teaching programmes in animal studies. See their website for more details:

http://www.culs.canterbury.ac.nz/research/asa/index.shtml

Call for Papers
Society & Animals Special Issue
Violence & Animal Abuse: Advances in research & policy

In 1997 Society & Animals published a special issue which presented research examining aspects of the proposed link between deliberate animal abuse and human-directed violence. In the intervening years this field has grown in both scope and application. The aim of this special issue is to present papers that focus on research and/or policy developments related to the link between human violence and animal abuse.
Papers are invited for this special issue; topics to be considered include, but are not limited to:
· The status of the 'progression thesis' of violence
· Professional or governmental response to animal abuse and interpersonal violence
· Family violence and the role of animals
· Broader, non-deliberate (e.g., neglect/hoarding), animal cruelty
· Approaches to the assessment and treatment of animal abuse

Although the body of the issue will feature full research articles, other forms of papers also are welcome: theory, critical review, brief research reports, and commentary.

Special Issue Editors
Tania Signal (t.signal@cqu.edu.au)
Nik Taylor (n.taylor@cqu.edu..au)

Important Dates
· Submissions are due June 1, 2007

· Anticipated publication of Special Issue, early 2008

Submissions
· Papers must be submitted, electronically, to the Special Issue Editors

· All submitted articles must adhere to the Instructions to Authors of Society & Animals and will be reviewed according to the procedure laid out on the journal's web site (http://www.psyeta.org/sa/index.html)

CFP: Ecocriticism and The Animal Other
Northeast Modern Language Association
Convention 2007, Maryland, USA

Theorist Cary Wolfe claims the question of the animal is "perhaps the central problematic for contemporary culture and theory." This panel seeks papers that address the presence of the animal in literary, filmic, and other cultural forms.
Proposals energized by interdisciplinary and cultural studies methodologies are especially welcome. Also welcome are proposals that use the location of the animal to theorize new modes of ecocritical practice.

This session responds to a groundswell in contemporary theoretical and ecocritical practice in which scholars have increasingly begun to attend to the presence and function of the animal in literature, film, art, and philosophy. Recent work by Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto; Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal; Jacques Derrida, "And Say the Animal Responded"; Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory
and the anthology Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal; taken together with recent films such as March of the Penguins, Eight Below, Winged Migration, and Grizzly Man, indicate that representing and thinking about the animal occurs at all
levels of culture. As Derrida and Haraway remind us, opening up the question of the animal simultaneously opens up the question of the human. That is, by interrogating the particular ways in which the status of animal is assigned to an
"other," one creates the opportunity to investigate the operations of long humanist traditions that employ the construction of the animal to shore up the construction of the human.

The purpose of this session is to convene scholars whose work comes at
the question of the animal from a variety of directions, thereby creating productive discussion that cuts across genre and discipline. In the service of examining
representations of the animal in literature, film, and other cultural forms, topics might include: posthumanist perspectives on or theorizations of the animal, animals and
technologies, the animal in/as art, animals and globalization, animality as inequality/animality and other inequalities, the companion animal.

This panel is co-sponsored by the Association of the Study of Literature
and the Environment.

Proposals should be 500-750 words. Send proposal by email to:
nmerola@risd.edu. Deadline: Sept 15, 2006.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR SYMPOSIA, WORKSHOPS AND ORGANISED DISCUSSIONS
21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology
http://compworx.isat.co.za/scb/callsym.htm

The 21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology, One World, One Conservation, One Partnership, will be held from 1 - 5 July 2007 in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The Local Organising Committee (LOC) welcomes proposals for symposia, workshops and organised discussions -
including those from the Social Sciences. All proposals must be submitted by 16 October 2006 to 2007@conbio.org The Local Organising Committee expects to select these sessions by 8 December 2006.

The theme of the 2007 annual meeting is One World, One Conservation, One Partnership and emphasises the need to move away from national, regional and disciplinary territoriality in support of a joint effort to conserve the world's biodiversity by uniting towards a common goal. Preference will be given to proposals that relate to one of the four major themes of the meeting (see website). We encourage organizers to address unifying conceptual issues (ecological, social, or both) rather than presenting a series of stand-alone case studies. Topics should differ from those presented at recent SCB annual meetings (see www.conbio.org/2006 for lists). Individuals may not submit more than one proposal. As a general rule, no individual may give more than one presentation at the meeting.

All organisers, symposium speakers, and invited participants must register by the early deadline of 16 March 2007.

For more information, contact the
Local Organising Committee SCB 2007
Centre for African Conservation Ecology (ACE)
Department of Zoology, P O Box 77000
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth 6031
tel +27 41 504 4278; fax +27 41 504 1778
email: 2007@conbio.org; www.conbio.org/2007Roanoke, Virginia, May 17-19,
2007

'Conservation Hunting' in New South Wales State Forests

Conservation hunting programs are now in place in 142 State Forests. A total of
142 state forests are now officially declared under the Game and Feral
Animal Control Act for conservation hunting programs.

The roll-out has occurred in three stages, commencing in March 2006 with
31 state forests, a further 66 forests in June and the latest declarations
occurring last Friday (14th) for a further 45 state forests. Once Crown
Land area (Grabine Lakeside State Park) was also declared in May 2006.

Since conservation hunting commenced on public land in NSW, Game Council
has issued close to 1600 Restricted NSW Game Hunting Licences (R-Licences).

In that time, licensed hunters have officially reported culling close to
650 feral animals from State forests, mainly goats, wild deer, foxes and
pigs.
“The result is very pleasing, given the new licensing system only took
effect in March this year. Despite claims by the anti-hunting groups,
conservation hunters can make a contribution to feral animal control,’’ Mr
Boyle said.


LINK TO DECLARED AREAS:
http://www.gamecouncil.nsw.gov.au/

Taken from the Newsletter of the Invasive Animals CRC, "Feral Flyer", 21.07.06.

The significance of the animal "other" to the human condition is oft-noted
and increasingly of interest to scholars in the humanities and social
sciences. Claude Levi-Strauss' famous dictum, "animals are good to think
with," Paul Shepard's assertion that "the others" (animals) made us human,
and John Berger's insistence that humans must "look" at animals because we
rely on the animal other for self-definition, all reference the diverse ways
that human cultures have represented and interacted with animals. The
prevalence of animals in everyday life and culture, whether as sources of
food, clothing, and other raw materials, as means of transportation and
energy, as subjects of scientific research, as objects of entertainment and
amusement, as inspiration for artistic and literary creativity, as deities
or representatives of the divine, or simply as metaphors, attest to the
importance of these relationships.

Increased thinking about animals by cultural theorists, historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, literary scholars, and ethicists has resulted
in a number of interdisciplinary studies addressing the role of animals in
shaping human culture, society, and historical experience. Focusing
primarily on Western Europe and North America, these collections are largely
silent about the place of the animal in Europe's "other" history and
culture, namely that of Russia. On the periphery of the European
experience, and straddling the land masses of Europe and Asia, Russian
culture is marked by preoccupations with issues of identity,
marginalization, and uniqueness that extend the basic concern with an
"animal other" outlined above to more generalized patterns of
self-definition.

"The Other Animals" seeks to bring together a group of scholars to present
their work and engage in discussions about the significance of animals in
Russian history and culture. The goal of the conference is to identify
themes and questions specific to the Russian experience as well as the
advantages and limitations of comparative perspectives. The organizers hope
that the conference papers and discussions will serve as the foundation for
an edited volume as well. The conference will be conducted in workshop
format, with panels organized around particular case studies or themes
addressed in pre-circulated papers.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
-animals in folklore
-animals in religion (particularly Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and
shamanism)
-animals in literature, art, and film
-animal attractions, such as zoos, circuses, and trained bears
-animal models for medical research and the production of scientific
knowledge
-animal welfare and protection
-biodiversity, and the environment
-animals in agriculture and the city
-hunting
-vegetarianism
-warfare
-pet keeping
-theoretical perspectives on the animal in Russian history and culture

Scholars interested in participating are invited to submit a paper title,
abstract (no longer than one page), and a brief CV (including relevant
publications) by September 15, 2006. Successful applicants will be notified
in November, 2006. Participants' lodging during the conference will be
provided by the conference sponsors, Virginia Tech and Bates College.
Participants also will receive a subsidy to defray travel expenses.

Please send submissions to Amy Nelson
(<mailto:anelson@vt.edu&gt;anelson@vt.edu) and
Jane Costlow(<mailto:jcostlow@bates.edu&gt;jcostlow@bates.edu) by September 15, 2006.

CALL FOR PAPERS
2007 Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OIEAHC) and Society of Early Americanists (SEA) Conference
June 7 to June 10th, 2007
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia http://www.wm.edu/oieahc/conferences/13thannual/panel_list.cfm)

The Animal in 17th and 18th Century America http://www.wm.edu/oieahc/conferences/13thannual/panel_details.cfm?PanelID=93

Recent work in what is being called critical animal studies has traced the idea of the animal through both the continental and analytic traditions of western philosophy, finding it key to the production of modern and postmodern epistemology and ethics. This panel will explore the category of the animal in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was coming into focus as a reconsideration of Aristotelian zoology and as one among a host of colonial biopolitical projects. Contributions are hereby solicited on any subject relating to animals and animality in the Americas circa 1600 to 1800.

To what extent did writers of the time possess a concept of "the animal" distinct from the narrower "beasts" of early modern period and the broader "nature" of the systematic natural historians?

How did the experiences and specimens emerging from the colonies reinforce or trouble contemporary advances in zoology?

Do animals function differently from plants in the complex imperial economy of science?

Are there alternatives in the period to the machinic and organic models of animality from the preceding and succeeding eras?

Papers for this panel might examine wild and domesticated animals, animal communities (beyond beavers and bees), animal gender and reproduction, animal-derived commodities, animal displays (museums and zoos), and animal habitats as they appear in the historical, literary, and environmental record. This panel is co-sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE).

Please submit a one-page proposal and a brief cv to Michael Ziser
(mgziser@ucdavis.edu) prior to 15 September 2006.

Call for Submissions: Animal Others and the Human Imagination

Submissions are invited for an edited volume, "Animal Others and the Human Imagination: Explorations of the non-human in Self-Understanding", to be published by University of Toronto Press. It is the aim of this volume to explore how conceptions of non-human animals are fundamental to ideas about human nature, typically through their negation. The volume hope to draw together works in anthropology, religious studies, psychology, philosophy etc. that explore the processes through which animals are 'othered.' In most of the worlds' religious and cultural traditions, animals are a fundamental other to the human self. They play a vitally important symbolic role in human self-conception; demarcating the limits which humans seek to transcend.

Most, if not all, known cultural and religious traditions posit a unique space for humanity. Humans are not conceived as just one life-form among many; they are typically understood as special in some vitally important way. It is striking that the belief in human exceptionality generally rests upon a presumed capacity to transcend the physical. It is widely held that humans alone are symbolic animals, capable of extending beyond our physical limits. Whereas animal natures are seen as fixed and encoded, human natures are understood as indeterminate, unpredictable, and in a 'process of becoming'. Our human-ness is revealed in the degree to which we distance ourselves from our determinate, biological (animal) nature. In the philosophies and cultural traditions associated with the West, this has played out in terms of the familiar "mind-body dualism", in which human essence and dignity are believed to be located in the mind, and in which the body is conceived of as governed by 'animal appetites,' in need of discipline. But the relative denigration of the physical body (vis-a-vis the "true self"), and its association with animal nature, is far more widespread than the Western tradition. Indeed, in varying degrees and forms, it may be a human universal. The 'problem' of the body for human beings (its aging, decay and death) and the implications of this problem for human meaning, are the challenges to which every cultural and religious tradition responds. Exploring these questions has long been a focus within philosophy, literature and the social sciences. The association of the human body with animal nature, however, and the implications of this association for human understanding, have not been adequately studied.

The aim of this proposed volume is to draw together works that explore the 'othering' of animals in a variety of socio-cultural and religious traditions, with each chapter focusing on a particular historical or ethnographic example. The first section of the volume could examine the role and conception of animals within specific traditional worldviews, including religious philosophies. The second section could explore conceptualizations of animals in post-modern, post-Darwinian secular discourses where differences between humans and non-humans are constructed on grounds other than the appeal to a divine plan. A substantial final chapter would seek to explore the significance of the Non-Human in the construction and understanding of what constitutes the Human, through a comparative analysis of the individual essays in the volume.

Abstracts will be collected over the months of June and July 2006. Please feel free to forward to any colleagues who might find this project to be of interest. Queries and electronic submissions should be directed to: Janet Gunn, Research Assistant, Ph.D. candidate, Religion, University of Ottawa, e-mail janet.gunn@mac.com

The Voiceless Grants Program offers grants of $30,000 to non-profit
organisations, councils and universities for the design and implementation of projects which improve the lives of animals in Australia.

Schools may also apply for $500 grants (seed funding) to help them with
activity costs like educational speakers, excursions to animal shelters and
the purchase of humane education materials. Applications for Seed funding are ongoing. In 2006 there are a further two grants available for projects that aim to end the suffering of factory farmed animals worth $5,000 and $10,000 each.

Application forms are available from the web site.
Applications are closing on 30 June 2006.
Contact Details:
Elaine Morris
Manager, Communications & Education
Voiceless
Web: http://www.voiceless.org.au/
Phone: 02 9357 0723
Fax: 02 9357 0711
Mobile: 0419 637 036
Street Address: 2 Paddington Street, Paddington NSW 2021

We plan to create an interdisciplinary edited volume on Franz Kafka and his use of animal characters in his writing. We are seeking original unpublished articles, of approximately 5000-7500 words, addressing the broad questions: How do these non-human characters function in Franz Kafka's literature, diaries, and letters? What do his representations of animality indicate about Kafka's - or our own - understanding of the human? How does our understanding of the nature of the human - and the humane - impact our understanding of non-human animals? How does Kafka use animals to explore ideas of escape, refuge, exploration, liberation, self-discovery, self- invention, revolt, vitality, ideas of conformity, taboo, social or familial failure, awakening, alienation, return or failure to return to innocence?

Full article (with bibliography), short abstract, and brief biography, should be sent by e-mail attachment by March 1, 2007, to both Dr. Donna Yarri (donna.yarri@alvernia.edu) and Dr. Marc Lucht (marc.lucht@alvernia.edu). We would be delighted to discuss the project further with you if you were to get in touch via e-mail.

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

For Spring 2007, Proteus seeks articles that examine the relationships between humans and animals from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines. Articles may discuss wild or domesticated animals; they may encompass multiple human societies and animal species; or they may focus on the interactions between an individual human and animal. Submissions may include, but are not limited to, articles and essays written by scientists, humanists, historians, social scientists, and literary scholars. The journal especially encourages articles that span multiple disciplines. Poetry and art are accepted.

Deadline for manuscripts is October 2, 2006.
Publication date is April 2007.

Manuscripts must be typed and double-spaced.
Preferable length of articles is 2,000 to 5,000 words. Longer papers will be considered.

Send manuscript as a Microsoft word attachment to: proteus@ship.edu
Contact Person: Proteus Managing Editor, Marcia Gibbs (717-477-1206)

Potential supervisors are advised to apply for the second Cohort of IA CRC-funded scholarships and scholarship top-ups by Monday 21st May. It is intended that IA CRC scholars be closely aligned to IA CRC projects, but with a sufficiently challenging and independent area of activity to justify a PhD study. Scholarships will be provided at a generous industry level ($25,000 per annum tax-free) and will be awarded for up to four years. The longer timeframe than most Australian scholarships is to allow more time to complete studies and for 80 days of skills and experiential training, which is an expectation for all IA CRC scholars. Scholarships will be available for study through IA CRC member universities only (ANU, Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle Queensland, Western Australia, York and Minnesota). Scholarships will generally be available for Australian and New Zealand citizens or permanent residents only. IA CRC will also fund Honours projects with a $5,000 scholarship, as a means of attracting scholars into the 2008 PhD cohort
An application form can be obtained at http://www.invasiveanimals.com/images/pdfs/]->here

Applications should be directed to Education Program Coordinator, Nina
Jenkins at nina.jenkins@invasiveanimals.com.

Dislocating the Frontier

Dislocating the Frontier: essaying the mystique of the outback, edited by Deborah Bird Rose and Richard Davis, was recently launched by Professor Peter Read. The blurb on the book cover reads:

The frontier is one of the most pervasive concepts underlying the production of national identity in Australia. Recently it has become a highly contested domain in which visions of nationhood are argued out through analysis of frontier conflict. Dislocating the Frontier departs from this contestation and takes a critical approach to the frontier imagination in Australia. The authors of this book work with frontier theory in comparative and unsettling modes. The essays reveal diverse aspects of frontier images and dreams - as manifested in performance, decolonising domains, language, and cross-cultural encounters. Dislocating the Frontier takes readers beyond the notion of a progressive or disastrous frontier to a more radical rethinking of the frontier imagination itself.

You can download Richard Davis' chapter entitled 'Eight seconds: style, performance and crisis in Aboriginal rodeo' for free at:
http://epress.anu.edu.au/dtf_citation.htm

'Tiger Country'
Radio Eye recording from Saturday 25/02/2006

'Tiger Country' is a documentary essay by writer and filmaker Susan Murphy (Upside Down Zen: a direct path into reality, 2004). It explores the idea that humans are incomplete without relationships with other animals and features a number of speakers including David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, 1996) and Deborah Bird Rose (Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture, 2000). You can hear a recording of the programme through the Radio National website: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/radioeye/stories/s1550181.htm

Parallax Volume 12, No. 1, Jan-March 2006

Parallax, an online journal of social science and cultural studies has a special volume devoted to animal studies. "This issue of parallax addresses the question of human beings as animal beings. What is the animal nature of Plato’s featherless biped? What is the lowly origin, to which Darwin drew attention, that remains indelibly stamped in humanity’s bodily frame? How does the wild animal, which Nietzsche tells us has not been exterminated but rather deified, manifest within the processes and products of human culture? And what, following Derrida, is the nature of the history that links autobiography, the ‘I am’, with the animal? What happens when novelists and scientists, philosophers and cultural theorists, write not about animals but as animals." (from Tom Tyler, 'Introduction') Full text articles available through http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk

UTas Animals and Society Study Group

The UTas Animals and Society Study Group was formed in June 2005 and has participants from the arts and humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences. The group aims to encourage interdisciplinary research in the animal studies field and to increase dialogue between academics and the wider public. So far, three seminars have been held. Helen Tiffin from Queen's University, Canada presented a paper "Foot in Mouth: Animals, Meat-Eating and the Cannibal Complex", zoologist Menna Jones spoke about the Tasmanian Devil facial tumour disease, and a forum was introduced by Dan Lunney and Darryl Jones, who talked about "A New Ethic for a New Ecosystem: living with urban wildlife" and "Understanding People and Animals in Urban Wildlife". In the future, the group also intends to hold informal meetings to discuss specific topics and research interests.

If you are based in Tasmania and would like to be placed on our email list, contact Carol Freeman carolf@utas.edu.au or Yvette Watt Yvette.Watt@utas.edu.au

Animal Issues Sydney

Animal Issues Sydney is a fortnightly reading group for anyone
interested in the scholarly analysis of animal issues. The group is
based at Sydney University and at each meeting members discuss an
appropriate reading. Core members include three PhD students, all
writing in the area of animal protection, and a veterinarian. If you are
based in Sydney and would like to get involved in the group please
contact Siobhan O'Sullivan at s.osullivan@econ.usyd.edu.au

Australian Animal Welfare Stakeholder Analysis, Bureau of Rural Sciences

A report on an Australian animal welfare stakeholder analysis has been compiled by Nicole Mazur and Heather Aslin at the Bureau of Rural Sciences. The report provides the results of a stakeholder analysis undertaken for the DAFF Animal Welfare Unit and to support the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy. It provides a brief review of previous research on values, attitudes and beliefs towards animals and animal welfare issues, and examines in detail the range of groups and organisations involved in animal welfare issues in Australia. The report is available for free download at the BRS website.

H-Animal

H-Animal, a list-serve run under the rubric of H-Net is now up and running. You can join the discussion list and/or check out resources and the latest postings at their website:

http://www.h-net.org/~animal/

Reports of the conference 'From Darwin to Dawkins', that took place in London in March 2005 on Science and Animal Sentience are available. The reports and video clips from some of the presentations are on the following websites:

www.animalsentience.com
www.ciwf.org.uk/education/international.html