Human-Animal Studies: Remembering the Past, Celebrating the Present, Troubling the Future

Abstract

This is the third in a series of reports on the state of the field of Human-Animal Studies. In the introductory section, major terms in the prevailing definition of the field—Human-Animal Studies is the interdisciplinary study of human-animal relationships—are unpacked and critically analyzed. Subsequent sections deal with the field’s past, present, and possible futures. A schematic history of the field considers both scholarly contributions and programmatic inroads in the academy. The current state of the field section describes its breadth in terms of publication venues, disciplines that interface with it, and the variety of methods employed. It also offers a description of several common strategies that critique the received view of the categorical divide between human and other animal beings. The final section highlights both the potential of and anticipated roadblocks to each of several future trajectories.