Human-Animal Studies Fellowship
The ASI-WAS fellowship is an interdisciplinary program that enables 6-8 fellows to pursue research in residence at Wesleyan University's College of the Environment. It 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.
Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut is a selective private, coeducational, non-sectarian school of liberal arts and sciences known for the excellence of its academic and co-curricular programs. Wesleyan's College of the Environment was created in 2009 with a belief in the resilience of the human spirit and a desire to engage students and scholars in discussions about environmental issues and their social and political impact.
The fellowship is hosted by Wesleyan faculty Lori Gruen and Kari Weil. Gruen is Chair and Professor of philosophy, environmental studies, and feminist, gender and sexuality studies at Wesleyan, and author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, Feb. 2011). Weil is a University Professor of Letters at Wesleyan, and author of Thinking Animals: An Introduction (Columbia, 2011). The fellowship program is directed by the ASI's Executive Director Ken Shapiro and Margo DeMello, Program Director, Human Animal Studies Program.
The fellowship is open to scholars from any discipline investigating a topic related to human-animal relationships. Selected topics from previous years programs include:
- Analyzing One County Attempt to go No Kill
- Animal Ethics in Cold War Literary Culture
- Animal Experimentation and Animal Welfare in Twentieth Century Anglo-American Science
- Animal Research in Theory and Practice
- Animals and Colonialism
- Cloning Extinct Species of Mammals
- Ethics and Politics in Environmental Discourse in India
- Gender Relations in Cattle Ranching
- Genetically Engineered Pigs
- Human Animal Relationships at the Duke Lemur Center
- Inter-species Identity and Alterity in a Video Game
- Legal Personhood, Animal Advocacy, and Human-Animal Relationships
- Literary Representations of Dogs
- Media Representations of the 2007 Pet Food Recall
- Science and Policies Affecting Elephants in Captivity
- The Animal Rights Movements in France and the United States
- The Human-Animal Relationship for Veterinary Students
- Victorian Quaker WomenContributions to Feminist-Animal Ethics
- Xenotransplantation and Black Market Organs
Eligibility. Applicants must (1) possess a Ph.D., J.D., M.S.W. 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.
Selection Process. The selection committee includes members from a range of disciplines connected to Human-Animal Studies. Applications are evaluated on the contribution that the completed project will make to Human-Animal Studies, the qualifications of the applicant to complete the research, and how well the applicant's project complements the other projects. In addition, we favor projects that include policy and practice implications.
Meet the 2012 ASI-WAS Fellows and see their bios and photos here!
