Description
Book SynopsisGender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies explores nonhuman animals' experiences of gender, physiological sex, and sexuality while in nature and captivity. The contributors in this collection analyze nonhuman oppression issues, such as reproductive freedom, deconstructing dichotomous thinking, and promoting animal liberation within and beyond the academy. The scholar-activists featured in this collection investigate injustice in news stories, literature, and other media that shape human perceptions and treatment toward nonhumans. Each chapter confronts notions of gender, physiological sex, or sexuality as construction by applying literary theory, cultural studies, disability studies, queer studies, ecocriticism, and more to promote justice and equity for nonhuman animals.
Trade ReviewGender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies is a timely and extremely needed collection that interrogates the interconnections between systems of oppression, like speciesism, sexism, racism, and ableism. At a time where scholars, activists, and nonprofit leaders are reevaluating the depths of structural sexism, racism, and cisheteropatriarchy within their institutions, this book illustrates the need for liberation struggles to challenge all abuse in non/human communities in order dismantle hierarchical ideologies.
-- Z. Zane McNeill
The edition Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies charts a new territory by showcasing new developments in the growing discipline of Critical Animal Studies. The essays of the edition link activist and academic approaches to dismantle the exploitation and oppression of nonhuman animals. Featuring an international team of contributors, it reflects the interdisciplinary character of Critical Animal Studies, including chapters with variable perspectives from social sciences, gender studies, political science, psychology, geography, law, and philosophy. This edition illuminates the nature of animal life's gender and sexuality, its power to inspire attentiveness to our place in the world, and he invites us to experience the animal world for ourselves.
-- Nikoleta Zampaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies is a brilliant critical collection of writings advancing ecofeminism put together by Amber E. George. Dr. George is one of the leading scholar-activists in the world advancing critical animal studies, ecofeminism, and gender and sexuality. The book is an essential book dedicated to social justice, intersectionality, and total liberation.
-- Anthony J. Nocella II, co-founder of critical animal studies and Editor of Peace Studies Journal
Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies is an important contribution to the studies of intersectionality, power, and oppression. Exploring issues in literature, the classroom, and everyday encounters, this collection offers both practical and theoretical insights in gender and animality.
-- Cynthia Rosenfeld
Students and activists alike will appreciate this cutting-edge, edited collection that embraces total liberation and fosters respect for the rights of all beings, with an emphasis on the foundational issue of gender identity in media and literary texts, in support of not only respecting humans across gender differences but also considering the complex genders and sexualities of nonhuman animals as well.
-- Carrie P. Freeman, PhD, critical animal and media scholar, and author of The Human Animal Earthling Identity
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Entanglements of Sexuality, Gender, and Species in Critical Animal Studies
Amber E. George
Part I: Challenging Speciesism, Patriarchy, and Heterosexism in Literature
Chapter 1: Animals and the Absent Referent in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Kelly Svoboda
Chapter 2: “the animals and birds were left in peace”: Katharine Burdekin’s Queer Utopian Ecology
Sarah D’Stair
Part II: Liberating Nonhumans in the Classroom and Laboratory
Chapter 3: Queering Our Relations with Nonhuman Animals: Multispecies Sexuality Beyond the Laboratory
Mitch Goldsmith
Chapter 4: Teaching to Become Intersectional Allies: Engaged Activism, Ecofeminism, Anarchism, and Building Resistance in the Classroom
Damla Isik
Part III: Disrupting the Gendered and Sexual Violence Against Nonhuman Animals
Chapter 5: The “Unnatural,” “Immoral” Hyena and the Implications for Conservation Strategy
Annika Hugosson
Chapter 6: Humanity and Honeybees: The Inhumane Treatment of Honey Bees and Where We Go From Here
Samantha Orsulak
Chapter 7: Of Rats and Women: A Cross-Species Read of Space and Place
Samentha Sepúlveda and Emily Plec
Part IV: Biological and Reproductive Justice for Nonhumans
Chapter 8: Reproduction or the Lack Thereof: A Mode of Oppression, a Means to Liberation?
Sarah Tomasello, April Piazza, Nathan Poirier
Chapter 9: Intersex Inclusion: Indeterminant Sex and Gender Acceptance for Nonhuman Animals
Amber E. George
Part V: Decoding the Sexual Subjectivity of Nonhumans
Chapter 10: Can the Animal Consent? Zoophilia and the Limits of Logocentrism
Anastassiya Andrianova
Chapter 11: The Zoo Closet: On Whether Bestiality is a Queer Liberation Ethic
Jess Ison
