The Post-Anthropocentrism and Critical Animal Studies Research Group is the evolution of a reading group formed in 2020. Graduate students from the humanities, arts and social sciences at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, came together in their shared interest of “the animal question,” identity formation, theories on violence, extinction, social justice movements and story-telling.
Dr. Jodey Castricano’s contributions to Critical Animal and Posthumanist Studies (2008, 2016) attracts researchers from all over the world and it wasn’t difficult to notice a growing student body at UBCO that was invested in intersectional approaches to multi-species justice. Once a month, the Critical Animal Studies Reading Group gathered to discuss: academic articles (such as essays on de-extinction sciences and Derrida), podcasts (on CRISPR and the many economies that have come to constitute the Animal-Industrial-Complex), film (such as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster) and creative writing (such as Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country).
In 2022, the CAS Reading Group evolved into a research, writing and doing group that came to be known as the Post-Anthropocentrism and Critical Animal Studies Research Group. PACAS continues to meet monthly to discuss scholarly articles, fiction, art and media.
Exeter Animal Studies Reading Group
The Animal Studies Reading Group is a thriving network of researchers from across the University’s disciplines and Colleges who are interested in studying non-human animals and their relationship to humans and the environment. Through animals we investigate larger questions of care, intimacy, kinship, health, land use and food systems. We also investigate how social questions (e.g., gender, class, race, nationhood and ability/disability) are addressed with regard to other-than-human worlds.