This paper examines the agency of the dogs used to develop the Soviet manned space flight programme by considering what the dogs did as experimental subjects, as dog technologies, and as individual dogs in the context of the historically conditioned practices of Soviet science. Looking at how Soviet space researchers refined Pavlovian behaviourism…[Read more]

While male illustrators including Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), George Petty (1894–1975), and Gil Elvgren (1914–1980) are synonymous with the field of early-twentieth-century pin-up art, there were in fact several women who also succeeded in the genre. Pearl Frush (1907–1986), Zoë Mozert (1907–1993), and Joyce Ballantyne (1918–2006) each establi…[Read more]

In response to the four commentaries on ‘Cyborg uterine geography’, in which I argued normatively for reorganizing gestation on the basis of comradeliness, I grapple with three overlapping conceptual areas highlighted: the ethical and political affordances of the term ‘generosity’ in relation to care and pregnancy; the methodological questio…[Read more]

A review of the Bill Viola exhibition at the Stavanger Kunstmuseum including Man Searching For Immortality / Woman Searching for Eternity (2013) and Tristan’s Ascension (2005) in conversation.

Recent forms of realism in continental philosophy that are habitually subsumed under the category of “speculative realism,” a denomination referring to rather heterogeneous strands of philosophy, bringing together object-oriented ontology (OOO), non-standard philosophy (or non-philosophy), the speculative realist ideas of Quentin Meillassoux and…[Read more]

Christina McPhee’s ‘commonplace book’ draws from a palimpsest of handwritten notes, lists, quotations, bibliographic fragments, and sketches, from an artist whose voracious reading practice is a direct feed into her life and art — all set to a visual and textual design-as-score, as prominent writers on painting, media arts, performance, video i…[Read more]

The work of L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, especially her psychoanalytic criticism of Chaucer, and her formulations of discontinuist historical approaches to the Middle Ages, has been extremely influential within medieval studies for several decades. More recently she has been focusing on more broad defenses of the humanities, especially with regard to…[Read more]

Quarter Horses are considered one of the earliest and most enduringly popular breeds of horse that is “native” to the United States.

The American Quarter Horse Association formed as a breed registry in 1940, and set clear rules for what horses could be called Quarter Horses in its stud book. Recently, after several years of legal bac…[Read more]

Part of a panel discussion in the Use and Influence of the New Testament seminar

The aim of this course is to explore the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality in the literature of Medieval and Renaissance Southern Europe. We will approach questions such as the status of women and the context of misogyny, the societal role of same-sex relations, the presentation and visualization of sexuality, desire and the body. We…[Read more]

C. Lloyd Morgan is mostly known for Morgan’s canon (1894), still a popular and frequently quoted principle in comparative psychology and ethology. There has been a fair amount of debate on the canon’s interpretation, function, and value regarding the research on animal minds, usually referring to it as an isolated principle. In this paper we…[Read more]

A discussion of whether it makes sense to say that “lab animals” are engaged in a form of labor.

an overview of military research involving pigs, rats, and rabbits at DRDC Downsview [Toronto], from 2004 -2007.

appendix includes military docs secured thru an ATIP request by Animal Alliance Canada.

gender & Judaism in A Serious Man [Coen Bros, 2009], An American Dream [Norman Mailer, 1965] and the Pericope Adulterae.

In this essay, I discuss salient themes of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). I hold that The Child To Come’s main thrust is this: ‘The issue is not that there is no future but rather that there is no sure way of orienting toward that future, either to save it or to survive it’. The chall…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]