We are thrilled to let you all know about the upcoming event at Södertörn University, Stockholm, which will have a hybrid format, which means you’ll be able to attend it via Zoom. See the details below:
A release event for the anthology Squirreling. Human-Animal Studies in the NorthernEuropean Region, ed. Amelie Björck, Claudia Lindén & Ann-Sofie Lönngren (Södertörn: Södertörn academic studies), 2022 (download here: Squirrelling: Human–Animal Studies in
the Northern-European Region: Publikationer – Södertörns högskola).
Date and time: June 7 at 14.30-16
Place: Södertörn university, room PA239 AND on zoom via this link:
https://sh-se.zoom.us/j/63234606566
This anthology offers a mapping of the current state of the field of literary and cultural animal studies in Europe’s northern-most part, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Poland, and Sweden. Ultimately, the same overarching and urgent question is addressed: How can we challenge the current anthropocentric
paradigm in ways that benefit the production of less violent, more ethically sound and sustainable knowledge regarding the relationship between human and non-human life?
14.30 introduction and presentations by the editors Amelie Björck, Claudia Lindén & AnnSofie Lönngren (Södertörn university)
15.00 Małgorzata Poks, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland: “Between the Tigers of
Anger and the Horses of Instruction in Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of
the Dead.” Poks is Ph.D. and assistant professor. Her main research interests cohere around contemporary North American literature, indigenous studies, US-Mexican border writing, critical animal studies, Christian anarchism and Thomas Merton’s late poetry. Poks has published widely in Poland and abroad, and she is also a recipient of several international research fellowships. In this presentation, Poks investigates the relationship between nonhuman animals and the Polish Nobel Prize-winner of 2018, who, since the beginning of her publishing career has spoken from a position that can be called ‘ontological animism’, foundational to all pre-modern cultures.
15.30 Elsi Hyttinen, University of Turku, Finland: “Humans and Seagulls, Paused: Pipsa
Lonka’s Sky Every Day (2020) and Theater During the Pandemic”.
Hyttinen is adjunct professor and senior researcher. Her research interests include early 20th century Finnish literature, contemporary drama, animal studies, queer theory, posthumanities and working-class literature. Hyttinen has recently co-edited (with Karoliina Lummaa) a research anthology on posthuman literary studies Sotkuiset maailmat (‘Messy worlds’, 2020). In this resentation, Hyttinen adresses the fact that the corona virus pandemic may have irreversibly affected both human and non-human life all over Earth. She describes the experience of writing from within the lockdown that the virus caused in Finland, as well as in many other places. Longing for theatre, for bodies, for connectedness, she observes that the pandemic is doing something to ‘the animal that therefore she is’.
16.00 snacks and bubbly