English Professor
Expertise
Fields
Research goals
Mahatma Gandhi famously stated that "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated." For over a decade, I have been exploring how cultures, societies, and politics can influence, or be influenced by, a population's relations with nonhuman beings. Specifically, my research and teaching examine the inventive uses of narrative to represent or describe the connections and communications that take place beyond the human, such as nonhuman animals, plants, and even fungi. I incorporate classical Greek, Renaissance, postmodern European and American, as well as Indigenous worldviews to broaden the societal and cultural implications of these human-nonhuman relationships.
In essence, as I tell my students, studying animals and their representation in literature is not just for those who love animals; instead, this analysis often subtly or not-so-subtly informs us as to how a human society is expected to care, or not, about each other.