Professor of Anthropology and Gender/Women's Studies Director of IFUSS, International Forum for US Studies Resident Director, The Animal Studies Initiative at Illinois
The welcome development of the veterinary humanities, and veterinary anthropology specifically, r... more The welcome development of the veterinary humanities, and veterinary anthropology specifically, raises the question of its potential relationship with the now well-established field(s) of the medical humanities, and of medical anthropology. Although there are national variations, the term "medical humanities" generally refers to either the tapping of the humanities to improve medical education by developing, through engagement with the humanities like literature and visual art, skills in empathy, visualization and expressivity, or alternatively, it refers to the application of humanities approaches of cultural critique to the presumptions, practices and institutions of the human medical world to denaturalize the ideologies of knowledge that contemporary human medicine professions depend upon. This article reflects on the potential impact that the development of a veterinary medical humanities could have on the field of (human) medical humanities and vice versa. Could such a development force a re-conception of notions of agency, of consent, and of the position of "patient" when the (human based) medical humanities is expanded to include both human and veterinary medicine? What would the potential usefulness, or limitations, both in conceptual and in applied terms, be of constructing a multi-species notion of "medical humanities?" What can such a comparative approach offer to veterinary medicine, in practice and in terms of the curricula of veterinary training? To reflect on these questions, this article draws on my multiple years of fieldwork in veterinary clinics and classrooms to first lay out the constituent components of the formal practice of contemporary veterinary medicine (at least in the U.S.) in terms of the roles that species specificity and relations to humans play in the delivery of care, and then seeks to center the animal in these practices to ask questions about consent, resistance, veterinary obligation, and the role of finance in comparison with human medicine. These similarities and differences will form the basis for a consideration of the effects of enlarging the medical humanities to encompass more than one species.
... Detailed studies of patterns of consumption and of the particularities of movement style in e... more ... Detailed studies of patterns of consumption and of the particularities of movement style in each ... Racial, cultural, and national identity are blurred, yielding a stereotype of "Latin" along the lines of ... in 1938, the stylization of the black baiana woman, often seen selling food on the ...
This essay investigates dance's “conditions of possibility” to argue that whi... more This essay investigates dance's “conditions of possibility” to argue that while dance and dancing is, in some ways unique, it many other ways it is similar to other types of labor. These types of labor function not simply as a job, or even career, but also as a “calling,” in the sense that they provide a core part of an individual's identity in the world and organize their life practices. Key dimensions of dance's labor which influence its precarity include the status of the arts in a particular social formation, the role of the state, the functioning of an informal economy, and the tension between art's marginalization and its simultaneous valuation as “priceless” cultural commodity.
The welcome development of the veterinary humanities, and veterinary anthropology specifically, r... more The welcome development of the veterinary humanities, and veterinary anthropology specifically, raises the question of its potential relationship with the now well-established field(s) of the medical humanities, and of medical anthropology. Although there are national variations, the term "medical humanities" generally refers to either the tapping of the humanities to improve medical education by developing, through engagement with the humanities like literature and visual art, skills in empathy, visualization and expressivity, or alternatively, it refers to the application of humanities approaches of cultural critique to the presumptions, practices and institutions of the human medical world to denaturalize the ideologies of knowledge that contemporary human medicine professions depend upon. This article reflects on the potential impact that the development of a veterinary medical humanities could have on the field of (human) medical humanities and vice versa. Could such a development force a re-conception of notions of agency, of consent, and of the position of "patient" when the (human based) medical humanities is expanded to include both human and veterinary medicine? What would the potential usefulness, or limitations, both in conceptual and in applied terms, be of constructing a multi-species notion of "medical humanities?" What can such a comparative approach offer to veterinary medicine, in practice and in terms of the curricula of veterinary training? To reflect on these questions, this article draws on my multiple years of fieldwork in veterinary clinics and classrooms to first lay out the constituent components of the formal practice of contemporary veterinary medicine (at least in the U.S.) in terms of the roles that species specificity and relations to humans play in the delivery of care, and then seeks to center the animal in these practices to ask questions about consent, resistance, veterinary obligation, and the role of finance in comparison with human medicine. These similarities and differences will form the basis for a consideration of the effects of enlarging the medical humanities to encompass more than one species.
... Detailed studies of patterns of consumption and of the particularities of movement style in e... more ... Detailed studies of patterns of consumption and of the particularities of movement style in each ... Racial, cultural, and national identity are blurred, yielding a stereotype of "Latin" along the lines of ... in 1938, the stylization of the black baiana woman, often seen selling food on the ...
This essay investigates dance's “conditions of possibility” to argue that whi... more This essay investigates dance's “conditions of possibility” to argue that while dance and dancing is, in some ways unique, it many other ways it is similar to other types of labor. These types of labor function not simply as a job, or even career, but also as a “calling,” in the sense that they provide a core part of an individual's identity in the world and organize their life practices. Key dimensions of dance's labor which influence its precarity include the status of the arts in a particular social formation, the role of the state, the functioning of an informal economy, and the tension between art's marginalization and its simultaneous valuation as “priceless” cultural commodity.
In Chapter 7, Desmond examines roadkill, or the destruction of “wild” animals by automobiles. In ... more In Chapter 7, Desmond examines roadkill, or the destruction of “wild” animals by automobiles. In contrast to the practices of mourning and remembrance described in previous chapters, humans engage in an immense process of forgetting when it comes to roadkill. Desmond questions why the conspicuous presence of roadkill is absent from public discourse, and unpacks the rhetorical strategies and ideologies used to render this enormous amount of animal carnage invisible. Desmond draws on ecological studies, anecdotal evidence, ecological writings, roadkill food sites, artists’ renderings, and popular publications to suggest that the status of roadkilled animals and of human relations to those animals is undergoing a shift. She argues that roadkilled animals are beginning to be accorded subjectivity, and publicly and privately grieved by some, especially artists. This process requires humans to attribute a notion of individuated life to wild animals.
Claiming that "disembodiment is crucial to citizenship," Russ Castronovo dubs the U.S. citizen a ... more Claiming that "disembodiment is crucial to citizenship," Russ Castronovo dubs the U.S. citizen a "necro citizen," dead to action and political engagement. Tracing what he terms an ideology of necrophilia in the 19th century, he finds a pervasive "political logic that idealizes disconnection and nonresponsivenes" (p. 18). From Hawthorne's Blythedale Romance (1852) to reports of sé ance tables soaring through the air of their own accord, a sense of disembodied presence permeates public discourse during this period and, he suggests, sets the frame for a politics in which the specifics of historical materialism can be denied. Analyzing fiction and nonfiction tracts about mesmerists, ghosts, onanism, and enslaved Africans and abolitionists, he sets out to show that "democratic incorporation produces alienation and hierarchy," not the idealized abstract equality that "citizenship" would seem to announce. The cost of such incorporation is, he argues, a depoliticization that "ensures that structures of class or racial privilege. .. remain static and inevitable"(p. 19). Castronovo's work builds on that of literary and cultural analysts like Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, who are concerned with issues of nation, nationality, the role of the state, and the power or lack thereof of a public sphere in the United States. They engage these issues primarily through an analysis of literary and visual texts, and so does Castronovo. He extends his notion of evidence from formal literary texts such as novels to antimasturbation tracts directed at white men and discussions of occult practices such as spirit-rapping and sé ances, noting that citizenship is shaped not only at the polls but also through "social discourses that act on private and privatized bodies" (p. 19). Questions about how state power functions through social practices will engage regular readers of current anthropology, but anthropologists and social historians will find that, although the framework is provocative, this book proceeds more by assertion than by ar-1. Permission to reprint items from this section may be obtained only from their authors.
Most of us probably do not think of sociologists as historians, but Kevin Fox Gotham, associate p... more Most of us probably do not think of sociologists as historians, but Kevin Fox Gotham, associate professor of sociology at Tulane University, shows us what is to be gained by bringing those two disciplines and their diverse methods of analyses together in productive counterpoint. Gotham's use of a post-hurricane Katrina frame for considering tourism and New Orleans provides an accessible lead-in for most readers, but the historical depth of his study enables him to offer significant theoretical contributions to our ways of thinking about the relationships among "race," tourism, and place, over time.
Review of "Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era" ... more Review of "Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era" and "Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890-1920"
Review of "Contemporary Navajo Weaving: The Glory F. Ross Collection of the Denver Art Museum" an... more Review of "Contemporary Navajo Weaving: The Glory F. Ross Collection of the Denver Art Museum" and "Reflections of the Weavers' World: The Glory F. Ross Collection of the Denver Art Museum"
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