2012 Human Animal Studies Fellows
The Animals and Society Institute and Wesleyan Animal Studies are proud to announce the 2012 ASI-WAS Human-Animal Studies Fellows:
Rheana (Juno) Parrenas is a cultural anthropologist who received her PhD in Anthropology at Harvard University in May 2012. Her dissertation, "Arrested Autonomy: An Ethnography of Orangutan Rehabilitation," investigates concepts and practices of care, independence, and mutual vulnerability that occur in encounters taking place at Malaysian wildlife centers between endangered, semi-wild orangutans and the situated people who come to care for them. She will develop her dissertation into a book manuscript of the same title as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University's Program in Agrarian Studies in the 2012-2013 year.
Dr. Sarah Hann is a veterinarian living in Bozeman, Montana. She holds a DVM from Cornell University and a Master's in English from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Hann's writing aims to improve communication between farmers, veterinarians, and consumers in an effort to increase public understanding of agricultural practices as well as enhance the health and welfare of humans, animals, and the environment. Her interests include rural veterinary medicine, conservation medicine, and veterinary acupuncture.
Gunnar Theodor Eggertsson is a doctorate student working on a thesis project in defense of animal stories as a serious literary genre and in search of ethical connotations to animal representations in fiction. His educational background is in comparative literature and film studies, with BA and MA degrees from the University of Iceland and the University of Amsterdam, respectively. He is an avowed animal rights advocate and believes that academic work about animals should be put in context with larger issues about animal exploitation in society and contribute to the on-going debate of the moral status of animals. He has taught courses on animals in culture at the University of Iceland and published several papers about issues of animal rights and animal representations, as well as a book on the role and status of cats in Icelandic society. In addition to pursuing scholarly interests, he has also published two children's novels and an album of original musical compositions in his hometown of Reykjavik.
Eliza Ruiz Izaguirre is a Mexican veterinarian and PhD candidate at Wageningen Institute of Animal Science, The Netherlands. Her PhD research evaluates the impact of village dogs (as nest predators) on a sea-turtle nesting beach in Michoacan, Mexico. She has brought into context this ecological problem by also exploring the human-dog relation in rural villages through the collection of dog stories. A chapter of her PhD thesis will reflect on village dog life, villagers perceptions on dogs, and current discourses of villagers and experts on village dogs. Apart from academic life, Eliza is a proud mother of two boys, and enjoys knitting, walking, and ballet dancing.
Harlan Weaver is a soon-to-be graduate of the History of Consciousness Department at U.C. Santa Cruz. Harlan's dissertation, Thinking and Feeling with "Trans Affect," explores the role of feeling in both transgender experiences of embodiment epistemological practices. Harlan's new project comes out of ten years of pit bull advocacy (and love). In it, Harlan explores the ways that species, breed, race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and nation are mutually shaped by relationships between humans and so-called dangerous dogs, "pit bull-type" dogs in particular.
Robert C. Jones received his PhD in philosophy from Stanford University in 2005. His professional research investigates the substantive cognitive properties that bear on the ethical treatment and moral considerability of both human and nonhuman animals. In addition, his research includes food ethics, environmental ethics, mind and cognition, species studies, and the question of what it is to be human. Robert joined the faculty of California State University, Chico, in 2008 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Center for Applied and Professional Ethics.
Brigitte Fielder is a Doctoral Candidate in English at Cornell University, finishing a dissertation on how interracial kinship ties re-figure models of white womanhood in nineteenth-century American literatures. She has begun a new project on how antebellum depictions of animals reveal the limits of interracial sympathy. Both projects open up new avenues for thinking about the limits of kinship and belonging.
