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Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 17-20, 2016<\/em><\/p>\n Organizers: Peter Meedom (Oslo); Frederike Middelhoff (W\u00fcrzburg)<\/strong><\/p>\n How should literary animal studies study animals (to paraphrase Cary
\nWolfe)? How do animals form texts and, conversely, how do texts form
\nanimals? This year\u2019s ACLA seminar (\u2018What Is Zoopoetics?\u2019) proved that
\nanimals cannot be separated from the question of language, metaphor, and
\nform. In other words, animals produce and pose eminently formal
\nquestions with regard to literature. Yet at the same time a fundamental
\nuncertainty was revealed about the object of literary animal studies:
\nWhat counts as an animal and how do we make these beings legible? Should
\nwe only deal with recognizable mammals, fish and birds, or should we
\nalso engage with any other form of life \u2013 bacteria, fungi, insects,
\nplants, or even imaginary beings \u2013 when literature presents us with
\nthese? And are we not falling into the trap of a b\u00eatise (Derrida) if we
\nintuitively categorize and label textual forms of life as \u2018animals\u2019,
\nthus, re-affirming the asininity of the \u2018animot\u2019? This second Zoopoetics
\nseminar wants to take advantage of the conceptual uncertainty and ask
\nwhat might be gained on the one hand by conceiving zoopoetics as a study
\nof how literature creates and develops forms of life, and on the other
\nhand by probing the specifics of species as well as individual forms of
\nlife \u2013 a notion of zoopoetics closely linked to Aaron Moe\u2019s appeal to
\nformally investigate \u201canother species bodily poiesis\u201d in literature. In
\nthis sense, it might be productive to question the self-evidence of
\nterms like \u2018animals\u2019 or \u2018nonhuman animals\u2019 and pay attention to how the
\ntexts themselves actually conceive forms of life. Can we as literary
\nanimal studies scholars approach literary forms of life without being
\nbiased by our zoological knowledge and tendency to explain animals with
\nthe means of discourse analysis? From the very beginning, literary
\nanimal studies has tried to avoid reading animals as simple stand-ins or
\ncontent carriers for something else, particularly human psychology.
\nHowever, this well-founded impetus is often accompanied by a certain
\nskepticism towards metaphor and symbolism as such, if not by an outright
\nlament over the lack of \u2018real\u2019 animals in a text. These difficulties
\ntestify to the methodological challenge of doing literary animal studies
\n\u2013 somewhere between an overtly literalized animal and the animal as
\nsymbolic container. It might then be at the level of significant form
\nthat the point of enmeshing of animals and text allows for the reading
\nof \u201ca logic different from that of intentionality or psychological
\ninteriority\u201d (Susan McHugh). Further, instead of framing zoopoetics
\nwithin the human-animal distinction, the cybernetic triangle (Dominic
\nPettman) could help to grasp the inseparability of animal, human, and
\ntechnology. This seminar seeks papers engaging with zoopoetics both as
\nan object of study \u2013 i.e. literary texts from any tradition or period
\nwhich develop and discuss forms of life \u2013 and as a methodological
\nproblem for literary animal studies.<\/p>\n