The 8th Annual Janice Monk
Distinguished Professor Lecture
"Feminism & Animals: Exploring Interspecies Relations in Botswana and Beyond"
Presented by
Dr. Alice J. Hovorka
Department of Geography
University of Guelph, Canada
Alice J. Hovorka is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph in Canada. Her research focuses on contemporary human-environment relations in Southern Africa, a region where lives, circumstances and landscapes have undergone rapid transformation within the past generation. Specifically, she explores issues related to environment and development with past projects highlighting gender and current work investigating the lives of animals and species relations of power in Botswana.
Friday, March 7, 2014, 3:30 p.m.
Integrated Learning Center, Room 130
Light Reception to Follow
The linkages between feminism and animals enhance understanding and explanation of
human-environment relations and offer potential avenues for addressing complex societal
problems. My aims for this paper are three-fold. First, I wish to emphasize the significance
of feminism as a robust and multifaceted route to the production and application
of geographical knowledge. Second, I wish to recognize the ways in which animals are
part of our daily practice and thus deserve prominence in our scholarship. Third, I wish
to illuminate, through a feminist more-than-human geography, how interspecies relations
necessarily shape lives, networks, structures, and relations of power. I begin by highlighting
the small yet engaging literature of feminist animal studies. This scholarship illuminates
the often shared and marginalized positionality of women and animals generated
through processes of othering. I illustrate how such connections manifest themselves in
the realm of gender, livestock and development research and practice. I continue by
applying feminism beyond its often gender-based applications. Specifically, I extend feminist
theoretical concepts (in particular intersectionality, embodiment, and difference),
methodological approaches (related to everyday life, empathetic understanding, and positionality),
and ethical perspectives (focused on addressing inequalities and enhancing
quality of life) to non-gender realms that explore animal geographies. I argue that feminism
offers avenues towards a more-than-human geography that acknowledges and investigates
animal circumstances, treatment and experiences, and ultimately provides
new insights on human values and social dynamics. I illustrate this feminist more-thanhuman
geography through my current research on the lives of animals in Botswana.
Sponsored by
School of Geography and Development
Institute of the Environment
Department of Gender and Women's Studies
Africana Studies Program
Southwest Institute for Research on Women
Center for Critical Studies of the Body
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthroplogy