Friday, June 6

th
, Lawrence Hall 177
5:30pm7:00pm


Hope Ferdowsian, MD
George Washington University and
Georgetown University Medical Center


A SYMPOSIUM ON ANIMAL VULNERABILITY


Keynote Presentation: Hope Ferdowsian, MD
Friday, June 6
th
, 2014, 5:30pm7pm, Lawrence 177

A Day of Presentations by UO Faculty and Graduate Researchers

SATURDAY COFFEE AND LUNCH PROVIDED

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center and the Departments
of Philosophy, Anthropology, English, Sociology, as well as the
School of Journalism and Communication



10:00am: Coffee & Tea

10:15am: Opening Remarks

10:30am: Debra Merskin (JCOMM), The Need Not to Suffer:
Animals, Humiliation, and Media



12:45pm: Lunch (Vegan/Vegetarian)

1:45pm: Andrea Eller (Anthropology), Primates of Least Concern: The
Biocultural Significance of Rhesus Macaques


3:15pm: Brook Muller (Architecture), Cities are more than Rock
Outcrops: Urban Architectures of Ecological Intensification



Friday, June 6
th
, Lawrence Hall 177
5:30pm7:00pm


Hope Ferdowsian, MD
George Washington University and
Georgetown University Medical Center

Abstract: Like humans, nonhuman animals are vulnerable to a spectrum of
physical and psychological harms. The health of humans and nonhuman
animals is inextricably linked by our common needs, including simple physical
requirements, safety and security, love, respect, and opportunities to live up to
our full potential. Failure to meet these needs can lead to visible and invisible
scars, to both our flesh and our minds. Emerging scientific evidence shows that
nonhuman animals deprived of these central needs can even suffer from mental
illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder, similar to war veterans, rape
survivors, and other traumatized populations. Fortunately, humans and
nonhuman animals also share a capacity for tremendous resilience. A deeper
understanding of factors that contribute to suffering and recovery across
species can benefit humans and nonhuman animals, and profound strength can
emerge from our vulnerabilities.

Hope Ferdowsian, MD, MPH, FACP, FACPM, is a
double-board certified physician in General Internal
Medicine and General Preventive Medicine and Public
Health. Her clinical, research, and policy interests have
focused on the health and protection of vulnerable
populations, including humans and nonhuman
animals. She has worked on issues including the
prevention of torture and other forms of violence,
bioethics, and disease prevention and management in
resource-limited settings. She is an assistant professor
of medicine at George Washington University and adjunct associate professor
at the Georgetown University Medical Center. She has led a multi-institutional,
interdisciplinary investigation of ethical and scientific considerations regarding
the use of nonhuman animals in research, funded by the National Science
Foundation. She is a volunteer physician for HealthRight International and
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and she serves as a consultant for the
PHR Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones. Internationally, she has
worked in Malawi, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Domestically, she
has worked with non-profit organizations providing health care for homeless,
immigrant, and underinsured populations.

About the University of Oregon Human/Animal
Research Interest Group

The University of Oregon Human/Animal Research Interest Group has
been showcasing and promoting animal-related research at the
University since fall 2012. Sponsored and supported by the Oregon
Humanities Center, our members include dozens of grad and faculty
researchers from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
We have organized many colloquia presentations, film screenings, and
invited speaker events on the University campus during the past two
years, and hope to continue our work into the future.

20122014 UO Human/Animal RIG Founders and Co-Directors



Anna Sloan
PhD Student, Anthropology










David Alexander Craig
PhD Candidate, Philosophy






For information about the Human/Animal RIG, or to join our email
listserv so as to hear about upcoming events, contact David Alexander
Craig or Anna Sloan at dcraig@uoregon.edu or asloan3@uoregon.edu.


The Need Not to Suffer: Animals, Humiliation, and Media

Debra Merskin
School of Journalism and Communication

Abstract: Animals are routinely used in the media to stand-in-for human emotions.
Countless greeting cards, youtube videos, episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos, and
commercials use animals to make us laugh. A first glance, these representations are
meant simply to be funny. However, a more careful examination shows animals are
often set up to fail and/or are forced to perform in ways, typically wearing ridiculous
human clothing, inconsistent with species behavior.

These performances are not unlike the humiliation experienced by African slaves, Native
Americans in Wild West Shows, women, and other Others placed on display and made
to perform in ways that serve the interests of those in power and reify the hierarchical
order. This is particularly the case with our genetically closest animal kinnon-human
great apes. An example is advertisements for CareerBuilder. These captive
(detained) animals are unable to give or withhold consent in terms of participating in the
experience. Often they perform out of fear of punishment or for food.

Whether animals feel what we call humiliation is one thing; our awareness that we can
humiliate is another. Fear and humiliation are among the many non-physical forms of
torture that, while leaving no visible marks are amongst those that may last the
longest (Reyes, 2007). This painful emotional experience can result in long term effects
due to disruption of senses and personality, as well as prolonged damage to the animal
psyche for, as been said of human experiences of torture, the worst scars are in the
mind(Jacobssen qtd. in Reyes).


Debra Merskin, PhD (Syracuse University), is an Associate Professor of Media Studies in
the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her research
examines the intersections of race, gender, and
species. She has published in a variety of books
and journals on animals including "Hearing
voices: The promise of participatory action
research for animals" (Action Research), "Re-
visioning ecopsychology: Seeing through dream
animals to the reality of species in peril"
(Spring), "Parallels in sources of trauma, pain,
distress, and suffering in human and nonhuman
animals" (with Hope Ferdowsian, Journal of
Trauma & Dissociation), and "Animals, agency, and absence : a discourse analysis of
institutional animalcare and use committee meetings" (with Debra Durham, in Animals
and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration).


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
3:15pm4:00pm


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
10:30am11:15am

Cities are more than Rock Outcrops: Urban Architectures
of Ecological Intensification

Brook Muller
Department of Architecture


Honey bees, Migrant Labor, and the Commodification of
Sadness in Salvador Plascencias The People of Paper

Rachel Rochester
Department of English

Abstract: Despite the fact that the European honey bee is not endemic to the
North American continent, it has nonetheless become a critical component of
regional agribusiness: commercial production of more than ninety U.S. crops
depends upon the labor of bees. Similarly, in 2006 77 percent of all agricultural
workers in the United States were foreign-born a percentage largely
comprised of undocumented workers from Mexico. Despite the importance of
both the European honey bee and immigrants from Mexico to the modern
food chain, however, both have nonetheless been treated ambivalently within
mainstream Anglo American culture: fear of bees is one of the most common
phobias; illegal immigration is an incendiary issue across political party lines;
and both bees and migrant laborers remain disproportionately vulnerable to the
environmental risks of agribusiness, particularly pesticide poisoning.
Nevertheless, recent recognition that declining immigration rates and honey bee
populations could lead to food shortages and profit losses within the United
States has catalyzed some demand for protecting both vulnerable populations;
the impetus for preserving both populations depends entirely upon the value of
the commodities they are able to produce. In The People of Paper, Salvador
Plascencia draws upon the storied history of the honey bee to expose the
vulnerable position of Mexican immigrants and Chicana/os within the United
States and to dramatize the effects of oppressive systems of power on both
human and non-human animal populations. By analyzing the bees contribution
to both the structural form of Plascencias novel and its content, contextualized
against contemporary rhetoric surrounding the European honey bee within the
United States and the status of the Mexican population of agricultural laborers,
this paper works to show how Plascencia uses the bee to add layers of political
and environmental commentary to an already multivalent novel.

Rachel Rochester is finishing up her second year at
the University of Oregon, where she is pursuing a
Ph.D. in literature. Her research focuses on the
fiction of South Asia, and she is particularly
interested in how such writing intersects with
animal studies, postcolonial theory, and issues of
social and environmental justice.


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
11:15am12:00pm


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
2:30pm3:15pm

The Dialectic of Invasion: Putting Invasive Species Events
into Socio-Historical Context

Jordan Besek and Julius Alexander McGee
Department of Sociology

Despite the social forces behind the introduction of invasive species,
as well as their immense environmental and economic impacts, scholars of
animals and society, environmental sociology and other social sciences have so
far largely ignored ecological invasions. This study is intended to address this
lacuna in two ways. First, it contextualizes invasive species events into
appropriate historical, ecological and social literature. In this section we
emphasize the manner in which studies of invasive species can not only
critically interrogate how human society has reworked the natural world, but
can also dramatically confront us with the material fact that human societies are
not in full control of this reworking. Second, we present a cross-national
empirical analysis of invasive species and economic development in 186
nations, and integrate this analysis into the long standing and important debate
in environmental sociology between treadmill of production theory and
ecological modernization theory. We develop a negative binomial regression
model to examine the relationship between population, GDP per capita, urban
development and the presence of invasive species taxa in nations. Our findings
support treadmill of production theory, showing that economic development
contributes to the establishment of invasive species.

Jordan Fox Besek is a PhD candidate in the Sociology
Department at the University of Oregon. His research
interests include environmental sociology, the
sociology of science, theory, the sociology of disaster
and animals and society. His dissertation is on how
social systems respond to unexpected ecological
change, in particular the social response to Asian carp,
an invasive species that has created large-scale
contradictions amongst political, economic and
cultural systems in the American mid-west.

Julius McGee is a sociology doctoral candidate at the
University of Oregon. His research interests are in
sustainability, quantitative methods, and
socioeconomic drivers of environmental degradation.
His dissertation explores how economic development
affects global sustainable efforts.


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
12:00pm12:45pm


Saturday, June 7
th
, Knight Library Browsing Room
1:45pm2:30pm

Primates of Least Concern: The Biocultural Significance of
Rhesus Macaques

Andrea Eller
Department of Anthropology

Abstract: Globally almost half of all primate species are considered threatened by
extinction, according to the IUCN. In Asia, almost 70% of primates are considered
threatened populations. In stark contrast to most, rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)
populations throughout SE Asia are thriving. Rhesus populations also live in colonies
throughout the United States as biomedical research subjects, and there are several
known introduced troops living here that were presumably founded by escaped/released
pets, zoo animals, or research subjects. They are the most populous and geographically
diverse primate in the world, second only to humans.

While so many primate species are vulnerable to extinction, these monkeys are thriving
in many ecological settings and frequently in close contact with human populations.
They are so widespread that their use in biomedical research has been offered as a
solution to their expanding wild populations, and they can survive under captive
conditions that many other animals could not.

Why are rhesus macaques so different from most other primate species? Rhesus
macaques ability to occupy diverse ecologies, including tolerating the environmental
pressures of a human-occupied space, is a skill that most primates do not possess. This
ability is partly why rhesus monkeys have a long and complex relationship with humans,
and that relationship is, itself, a part of the explanation for their large populations. But
perhaps more importantly, rhesus illuminate why some primates can thrive in a diverse
array of conditions and some cannot. This has implications for understanding the
successes of other widespread primates, like humans, and for managing primate
populations that live near to or with humans all around the world.

As a doctoral student, I am interested in comparative
primate evolution mostly from an osteological
perspective. Current research projects focus on
asymmetry within Old World monkeys as a
morphological predictor of developmental stability and
overall health, and examination of growth trajectories and
developmental pace in Macaca mulatta under varying
captive conditions. I am Assistant Curator of the UO
Comparative Primate Collection housed in in Dr Whites
Primate Osteology Laboratory, which includes collection
maintenance, managing students and volunteers, and
supervising multiple research projects currently underway
on the Collection. I also conduct ongoing behavioral
research at the Oregon National Primate Research
Center, and I presented work in the Bones and Behavior Symposium at the American
Association of Physical Anthropologists Annual Conference in 2013.
Contractarianism for Humans, Utilitarianism for Animals?:
The Difficulty of Animal Ethics in a Pluralistic World

Alan Reynolds
Department of Philosophy


Notes Notes