Presented By: Department of American Culture
Betty Ch'maj Distinguished American Studies Lecture
Sharon Patricia Holland: "On the Question of the Animal"
Sharon P. Holland (she/her) is the Chair of American Studies and Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professor in American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Professor Holland is also the president-elect of the American Studies
Association.
Her talk focuses on her next monograph, "an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life."
This project centers itself in the field of Animal Studies and approaches that work from all and every available vantage point. First and foremost, her work involves thinking through the hum/animal distinction, but away from distinction and toward relation, mirroring the seeking behavior that makes us animals in the first place. In this reorientation, she found herself having to resolve a standing tension between the ontological – being -- and the ethical – doing. In philosophical work about the human and the animal, ontological proofs matter more. By creating a hum:animal configuration that centers ethical commitment, her book is then able to ask very different questions about animal life; in following, tracking this life, I returned to debates about blackness, insurgence (Hortense Spillers), flesh and femaleness, the abattoir and lynching, the pessimistic turn and its ordering of "flesh." It travels through multiple areas of critique -- feminist science, new materialism -- and avenues of investigation film, novel, archive, etc.
About the Betty Ch’maj Lecture: With generous support from the Ch’maj family, the Annual Betty Ch’maj Distinguished American Studies Lecture Series was established to honor the legacy of Betty Ch’maj. Ch'maj, who was awarded the very first Ph.D. in American Culture in 1961 at Michigan, continued her career researching American literature and music, founding the Radical Caucus of ASA, and working to challenge systematic gender discrimination in American Studies programs.
To register please click here:
https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FYWmoxF0T3-0AI4fqAkYAg
Professor Holland is also the president-elect of the American Studies
Association.
Her talk focuses on her next monograph, "an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life."
This project centers itself in the field of Animal Studies and approaches that work from all and every available vantage point. First and foremost, her work involves thinking through the hum/animal distinction, but away from distinction and toward relation, mirroring the seeking behavior that makes us animals in the first place. In this reorientation, she found herself having to resolve a standing tension between the ontological – being -- and the ethical – doing. In philosophical work about the human and the animal, ontological proofs matter more. By creating a hum:animal configuration that centers ethical commitment, her book is then able to ask very different questions about animal life; in following, tracking this life, I returned to debates about blackness, insurgence (Hortense Spillers), flesh and femaleness, the abattoir and lynching, the pessimistic turn and its ordering of "flesh." It travels through multiple areas of critique -- feminist science, new materialism -- and avenues of investigation film, novel, archive, etc.
About the Betty Ch’maj Lecture: With generous support from the Ch’maj family, the Annual Betty Ch’maj Distinguished American Studies Lecture Series was established to honor the legacy of Betty Ch’maj. Ch'maj, who was awarded the very first Ph.D. in American Culture in 1961 at Michigan, continued her career researching American literature and music, founding the Radical Caucus of ASA, and working to challenge systematic gender discrimination in American Studies programs.
To register please click here:
https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FYWmoxF0T3-0AI4fqAkYAg
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