Muirhead 113, University of Birmingham
29th June 2018, 1pm
This BrANCA reading group will explore the presence of the non-human and nineteenth-century efforts to present and give voice to the non-human figures and presences. Framed by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s essay ‘The Rights of Dumb Animals’, published in Hearth and Home in 1869 and reprinted in an animal rights magazine, Our Dumb Animals we will discuss the ways in which American writers justified the rights – or the sentience – of non-humans. We will also discuss some excerpts and short pieces of fiction and poetry in which the non-human is a central presence, and whether they can teach us anything about either how to give voice to the non-human or if – more challengingly – they present alternatively epistemological or ontological positions by which our own engagement with the non-human might be restaged; or is it the case that they once more re-inscribe anthropocentrism as our de facto, and only available, vantage point?
For more information and readings, please visit: http://www.branca.org.uk/birmingham-june-2018.html#
To register for the reading group, please email Dr Jimmy Packham: j.packham@bham.ac.uk. A link to all readings will be sent to registered participants.