Call for Papers

Representing Animals at the End of the Century
a conference at the
Center for Twentieth Century Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
April 13-15, 2000

By tracing how animals have been represented in different contexts, in
different practices, and by different disciplines over the course of the
last hundred years, this conference will explore the connections between
our understandings of animals and the historical and cultural conditions
in which those understandings have been formed.  The conference will
move from discussions of the material presence of animals -- studies,
for example, of the changing place of animals in urban spaces and modern
sensibilities -- to explorations of how contemporary media culture is
shaping our fundamental cultural expectations of animals, of ourselves,
and of our environments.

Papers might consider any aspect of the representation of animals in
late nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultures, including the
exhibition of animals in circuses, rodeos, zoos, and county fairs, and
in artifactual displays in museums, bars, living rooms, and grocery
stores; the portrayal of animals in natural history documentaries and
television programs; the masquerading of humans as animals in
performance art; and the use of animals in the creation of various
semiotic systems.  Literary and film genres might include the bestiary,
fables, allegories, the fairy tale, children's literature, nature
movies, and science fiction.  Other visual domains might include nature
photography, cartoons, and advertising.  The discourses, tropes, and
iconography of popular art as well as the meanings of animals in such
diverse cultural activities as sport hunting and pest control would also
be relevant.  Other issues might include pet keeping; the projection of
complex emotional and ethical lives onto animals; the very idea of
endangered species; and the movable boundary between domestic and wild.
While the core disciplinary perspective of the conference will be
historical and the geopolitical focus Euro-American, scholars from the
full range of humanities disciplines, with interests far beyond the
traditionally conceived "West," will participate.

Selected papers from the conference will be included in a book planned
for publication in the Center series, Theories of Contemporary Culture
with Indiana University Press.

Special Guest Speaker: Jane Goodall

Other speakers include: Marcus Bullock (English, Univ. of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Katherine Grier (History, Univ. of South Carolina,
Columbia), Kathleen Kete (History, Trinity College), Masumi Iriye
(Graduate College Scholar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign),
Andrew Isenberg (History, Princeton Univ.), Alphonso Lingis (Philosophy,
Pennsylvania State Univ.), Arthur McEvoy (Law, Univ. of
Wisconsin-Madison), Clay McShane (History, Northeastern Univ.), Lisa
Naughton (Geography, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), Jennifer Price
(Writer, Independent Scholar), Karen Rader (Science, Technology, and
Society, Sarah Lawrence College), Sheila Roberts (English, Univ. of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Nigel Rothfels (History, Univ. of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Joel Snyder (Art History, Univ. of Chicago), and
Karen Warren (Philosophy, Macalester College).

Deadline for Submissions: Postmarked by October 22, 1999
Please send paper proposals (no more than 3 pages) and vita to:
Nigel Rothfels and Andrew Isenberg, Conference Organizers
Center for Twentieth Century Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
P.O. Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201 USA
tel: 414-229-4141; fax: 414-229-5964; email: [log in to unmask] (email
submissions cannot be accepted)

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu