I co-chaired a panel at the 2023 meeting of the American Anthropological Association titled “The America Animal.”

Abstract:

Other-than-human animals comprise a large part of the social and ecological fabric of our lives in ways that are often unexpected or unnoticed. Humans encounter other-than-human animals as pets, pests, food, medical devices, entertainment, bastions of “wild” nature, and more. While many animal species may be found in many countries and range across national borders, we ask, what makes an “American” animal? How are Americans and other-than-human animals transformed through their entanglements, and how do we understand and translate these engagements within the urban, suburban, or rural United States? We draw on the call by Donna Haraway (2016) to “stay with the trouble” and the suggestion that human lives and futures are intimately tied to the lives and futures of others.

This session explores ways in which animals enter into the American imagination and are defined by and co-constitute American identities. Taking a transdisciplinary approach to human/animal encounters, we will consider what it means to be ‘animal’ in the United States and how our practices with other-than-human animals challenge sociohistorical boundaries between human/animal, subject/object, wild/domestic, life/technology, and kin/other. Contributors will consider the ways that animals are transformed and defined through American idioms and how American lives are shaped by the many relationships they share with other animals within the diverse contexts of climate change in Hawaii, cattle grazing and ranching in the Alaskan “frontier” and the “American West”, the production of endangered species within pop culture and zoos, American encounters with the “wild”, conflicting perspectives on what it means to be native, and taxidermy.

At the panel, I presented part of my research on Texan-javelina relations.

PowerPoint: