This special episode of the ShARC Podcast: Animal Studies in Focus Series,
sees host Gemma Curto (@GemmaCurto1), and guest Juliet de Little (@julietdelittle)discuss floodings, their impact on human and nonhuman animals relations and its representations in Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel Rain (2019). Gemma Curto is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. Her research lies on interdisciplinary approaches to the relationship between literature, scientific methodologies and ecology. She has published an article in Green Letters on floods in biocentric graphic novels (2020). Juliet is a third year PhD student based across the school of Urban Studies and Management School at the University of Sheffield. Her research is concerned with what a climate just response to flooding in England might look like.

Recorded 16th June 2021.
Editing and post-production by Kitty Turner.
Music composed and performed by Kitty Turner.

Materials discussed: 
Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Rain, (London: Penguin Random House, 2019) 
Gemma Curto, ‘Floods in contemporary biocentric graphic novels&#39;. Ed. Astrid Bracke and Katie
Ritson. Spec. issue of Green Letters: studies in ecocriticism 24 no. 1. (2020), 6-22.
Juliet de Little, ‘Climate Justice and Flooding in England’ [Online Zine], Convivial Thinking ,
March 2021
Gemma Curto, ‘Chaotics of time in econarratives: from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) to
Richard McGuire’s Here (2014)’, PhD thesis (in progress)
Juliet de Little, ‘Climate justice and flooding in England’, PhD thesis (in progress)
Photograph: "A lone armadillo moves across a flooded roadway in Booth, Texas on Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle. https://www.chron.com/houston/article/Photos-Animals-swamped-in-Houston-flood-April-7255868.php#photo-10173200"

ShARC Podcast: Animal Studies in Focus 1 - Gemma Curto and Juliet de Little in Conversation

Dr Jemma Deer is a Researcher in Residence at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and author of Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). You can read more on her website, here: https://sites.google.com/view/jemmadeer/

Host Gemma Curto and guest host Cecilia Tricker-Walsh ask Dr Deer about her book and her article entitled ‘Quenched: Five Fires for Thinking Extinction’ published in Oxford Literary Review (2019). They discuss extinction.

Recorded 30th June 2021
Editing and post-production by: Kitty Turner .
Music composed and performed by Kitty Turner.

Image: "Dinosaur Tracks!" by Disgwylfa is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Animal Studies in Focus 2 – Gemma Curto and Cecilia Tricker-Walsh interview Jemma Deer

Eva Haifa Giraud has just joined the University of Sheffield as a senior lecturer in Digital Media and Society and is author of Veganism, Politics, Practice, and Theory (Bloomsbury, forthcoming July 2021)
Catherine Oliver is a Research Associate on urban ecologies at the University of Cambridge and author of Veganism, Archives, and animals: Geographies of a Multispecies World (Routledge, forthcoming August 2021)

Host Gemma Curto and guest host Dr Alice Higgs ask Eva and Catherine about their new books, the theme is veganism and sustainability.

Recorded 1st July 2021
Editing and post-production by: Kitty Turner .
Music composed and performed by Kitty Turner
Image: "Trio" by mripp is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Animal Studies in Focus 3 – Gemma Curto + Alice Higgs interview Eva Haifa Giraud + Catherine Oliver

In early November we welcomed Troy Vettese to ShARC to present a work-in-progress on Marxism and meat. Troy kindly allowed us to record his lecture, the abstract of which you can find immediately below. Enjoy.

One might think that vegetarianism or veganism are practices that belong to the left. Think of straight-edge vegan punks or the climate activists ladling out lentils at occupations. Yet, there is also a stream within the left that is vociferously opposed to veggie politics, despite the considerable ethical and environmental costs of meat. They are a certain kind of conservative communists that are wary of being too far from the mainstream. George Orwell excoriated sandal-wearing, queer vegetarians, and instead romanticized working-class colliers and practical-minded socialists like himself. Other sausage socialists include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who believed that meat-eating was a crucial part of human evolution and our species exceptionalism (spawning a whole field of pseudo-scientific evolutionary biology over the last century). Moreover, they believed that meat—and with it, the domination of nature—constituted the good life that socialism would provide for all. Such communist carnivory represented a break in the history of the left, as utopian socialists were often vegan or vegetarian (such as Robert Owen, Percy Shelley, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman). Nor has meat consumption served socialists societies well, as the devastation wrought by factory farms in East Germany in the 1980s or present-day China attests. One would think that Marxists, who are capable of such insightful critique, would be more reflective of dietary habits that contribute so much to climate change and the Sixth Extinction. The left should be wary of carnivory, as its justification often rests on appeals to conservative reason: pseudo-scientific hierarchies, tradition, and power.

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Fiesole. Half-Earth Socialism, co-authored with Drew Pendergrass, was published by Verso in April 2022

ShARC Podcast: Troy Vettese on the Left's Problem with Meat

In this episode, Christie Oliver-Hobley interviews Steve Baker. Steve Baker is a Norwich-based artist and writer.  He is Professor of Research for Art and Media at the University of Derby, and Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Central Lancashire. 

Christie asks Steve about his recent exhibition, Fieldwork (curated by Maria Lux, Sheffield, April 2019). They discuss animal studies, how Steve got into the field, issues surrounding representation of nonhuman others, plus how artistic work might inform theoretical practice, and vice versa. If you listen to the end you'll even get to find out Steve's favourite animal(s)!

You can view images from Steve Baker's Fieldwork project at: http://steve-baker.com/artwork

ShARC Podcast: Christie Oliver-Hobley Interviews Steve Baker

In this episode Peter Sands Interviews Thom van Dooren. Thom van Dooren is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2017-2021) in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, and founding co-editor of the journal Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press).

Peter asks Thom about his new book: The Wake of Crows (CUP, forthcoming 2019). They discuss the possibility of a non-abstract, animal-inclusive ethics, how animal studies might look to address the key issues of our time, such as habitat loss and extinction, field philosophy, violent care, story-telling and “snail semiotics”.

ShARC Podcast: Peter Sands Interviews Thom van Dooren

In this episode, Sarah Bezan interviews Lucinda Cole. Lucinda Cole is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois and author of Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600–1740 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).

Sarah asks Lucinda about her keynote talk at ShARC's Animal Remains conference. They consider how definitions and conceptions of vermin have changed over time, the ethics of island eco-tourism, how animal studies might look to address the key issues of our time, what animal studies might mean to its various practitioners, Extinction Rebellion, the relationship between scholarship and activism, and that episode of Black Mirror in which soldiers are implanted with chips so that they see fellow humans as vermin.

ShARC Podcast: Sarah Bezan Interviews Lucinda Cole

Animal Studies is a burgeoning sub-field of interdisciplinary academic inquiry, largely across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences but also some branches of Life Sciences, that conducts qualitative inquiry about nonhuman animals and human–animal relations. Over the last 15 years or so, animal studies has seen a steady growth in terms of conferences, journal special issues, monograph and book-series publications, graduate research, masters and undergraduate courses and programmes.

The University of Sheffield is recognised as a leader in this field, with the Millennial Animals conference (2000) regarded by the Papers of the Modern Language Association as foundational in the field. At the University of Sheffield, animal studies research is and has been conducted across the Faculties of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences in a number of disciplines (Literature, Film, Performance, Philosophy and Critical Theory, SIIBS, Music, History, Archaeology, Politics, Sociology, Geography, and Law).

Sheffield is unique in having a significant number of prominent scholars in their respective disciplinary areas of animal studies inquiry, given its still-growing status. This has led to the development of the Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC), a network of scholars, graduate and undergraduate students which has hosted a number of speakers over the past two years, as well as reading groups and other events including a meeting of the British Animal Studies Network. A particular focus of research expertise in ShARC is the political and cultural representation of animals; however, the proposed centre’s remit is conceived more broadly to include any form of qualitative understanding of animal life and of human–animal relations.

Aims of the Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre

The Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre aims to become the preeminent location internationally for research in the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences (and these areas’ interactions with other fields of research) that considers nonhuman animals and human–animal relations.

The Centre is led by our three directors: Dr Robert McKay, Dr John Miller (English) and Dr Alasdair Cochrane (Politics).

Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC)

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