Facultad de Letras Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile and the United States Embassy are pleased to invite you

to the Tercera Jornada de Literatura en Ingls and workshop on Current Trends in American Animal Studies led
by Dr. Kari Weil, from Wesleyan University. This event will take place on January 6-8, 2015, Auditorio Facultad de
Letras, campus San Joaqun (Av. Vicua Mackenna 4860, Macul. Metro lnea 5, estacin San Joaqun).
Program
Tuesday 6
9:30 11:00
Session 1. Why Animal Studies Now?
How has animal studies become a limit case for theoretical questions of difference and how have questions of
language, affect, and ethics been newly inflected within the field?
Suggested readings:
Kari Weil, A Report on the Animal Turn, from Thinking Animals.
Franz Kafka, Report to an Academy.
11:00

Coffee break

11:30 13:00
Session 2. Is Male to Female as Human to Animal?
How have women and animals been similarly situated as closer to nature within patriarchy and what are the
consequences?
Suggested readings:
From Singer and Regan, Animals in Western Thought (excerpt).
Carol Adams, The Rape of Animals, the Butchering of Women (excerpt).
Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat.
Wednesday 7
9:30 11:00
Session 3. Animal Others: Difference, Abjection, Empathy
Whose other is the animal? What are the social-psychological forces promoting identification and empathy with
and/or dis-identification and abjection of an animal and with what political, social or ethical effects?
Suggested Readings:
Weil-Gruen, Animal Others (from Hypatia).
Mary Douglas, External Boundaries.
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror (excerpt).
Kari Weil, Gendered Subjects, Abject Objects, from Thinking Animals.
Elizabeth Bishop, Pink Dog.
Nadine Gordimer, The Soft Voice of the Serpent.
11:00

Coffee break

11:30 13:00
Session 4: Queering Species, Agency and Matter
How and when is posthumanism queer?
Suggested Readings:
Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (excerpt).
Timothy Morton, Queer Ecologies (from PMLA).
Visuals: http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/10/11/arts-the-parahuman-sculpture-of-patricia-piccininiposthumanity-and-what-it-really-means-to-be-human/

Thursday 8
09:30 11:00
Round table: Animal Studies in the Humanities Today
Participants: Matas Ayala, Universidad Finis Terrae.
Alejandro Bilbao, Universidad Andrs Bello.
Valeria de los Ros, Instituto de Esttica, UC.
Sebastin Schoennenbeck, UC.
Moderator: Andrea Casals, Facultad de Letras, UC.
11:00

Coffee break

11:30 13:00
Conversation with director Sergio Castilla on his upcoming film Perla.
Dr. Kari Weil is a professor at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses such as Thinking Animals,
Animal Subjects, and Theories and Fictions of Androgyny. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from
Princeton University with specializations in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century France and Feminist Theory. She has
published widely on literary representations of gender, feminist theory, and, more recently, on theories and
representations of animal otherness. She recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Hypatia, entitled Animal
Others (27.3, Summer 2012), and she is the author of Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now (Columbia UP,
2012), and Androgyny and the Denial of Difference (University Press of Virginia, 1992). Her current project is
tentatively titled, The Most Beautiful Conquest of Man?: Horses and Other Animal Pursuits in Nineteenth-Century
France.

Please register before December 30 for this free event by filling out the form below and sending it to
bdemiguel@uc.cl (Bleny de Miguel, Coordinadora de Extensin y Educacin Continua, Facultad de Letras UC).