Transspecies Entanglements: Animal Assistants in Narratives about the Intellectually Disabled – David Herman (Seminar, Durham, 10th December 2013)

A seminar presented by the Centre for Medical Humanities to be held at Williams Library, St Chad’s College, 5.15—7pm.

After surveying work on the definition, history, possible mechanisms, and relative efficacy of Animal-Assisted Activities (AAA) and Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT), this presentation discusses how an expanded framework for inquiry — one that brings together ideas from transspecies anthropology, critical animal studies, disability studies, and narrative theory — can generate productive questions about narratives that portray animals as assisting children diagnosed with intellectual disabilities such as autism. I use several example narratives involving animal assistants to explore how understandings of the human/nonhuman boundary link up with constructions of the contrast between ability and disability, normality and abnormality.
– Professor David Herman, Department of English Studies, Durham University

Tuesday 10th December 2013
Open to all
Please RSVP to: mail.cmh@durham.ac.uk

Download PDF invitation.

Read about Professor David Herman’s latest publication, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind (MIT, 2013) here.