7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29 Free, but tickets required; Kilworth Memorial Chapel
TACOMA, Wash. – Sharon Patricia Holland, author of groundbreaking works about race, feminism, queer theory, mortality, and ethics, is coming to the University of Puget Sound this fall to talk about her new field of study: race and animal studies.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor has set out to explore how our race, gender, sexuality, and class shape our ethical behavior in personal interactions—not just with other humans—but with animals as well.
Her lecture, “Race, Sexuality, Humans, and Animals: Ethics and our Affective Lives,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, in Kilworth Memorial Chapel. The prestigious Swope Lecture is free to the public and campus members, but tickets are required. See below for ticket information.
Holland, professor of American Studies, is author of the prize-winning book Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity (2000) and of The Erotic Life of Racism (2012), a book described as a “brilliant and provocative” study of the realities of racism. Holland is also co-editor of a collection of African American and Native American criticism in The African Diaspora in Indian Country (2006).
Holland writes that her current project on “vulnerability,” in the context of humans, animals, and blackness, began seven years ago in a field in North Carolina. While seeking out riding lessons, she developed an interest in the “local equine barn culture,” and she began to develop relationships with three riding communities.
“This project took a turn toward vulnerability on one fine day in June of 2012—put simply, a 16-hand gelding named Petey bucked me off his back after we cantered over a jump,” she writes.
This bodily heave into a place of vulnerability got Holland thinking about the concept in ways she had not done before. She meditated on the particular vulnerabilities in the relationship between humans and animals, on black vulnerability and the dehumanizing effects of racism, and blackness as a thing “outside of the human altogether, and yet not quite animal.”
In the briefest of summaries, Holland says her research addresses the question: “What is blackness’ ethical and affective relationship to the animal?” In her book, she will use contemporary African American riders' oral histories to frame a series of inquiries into vulnerability—vulnerability as we understand it in many different forms, such as that caused by bare life, diversity, nakedness, accident, love, and sovereignty.
Holland is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a doctoral degree in English and African American studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In addition to working on two current book projects, she co-edited a special edition of Gay and Lesbian Quarterly and is the south's editor: a scholarly journal (formerly Southern Literary Journal). You can see her work on food, writing, and all things equestrian on her blog, The Professor’s Table.
The Jane Hammer Swope Lectureship on Ethics, Religion, Faith, and Values aims to promote discussion, critical thinking, and ethical inquiry about religious matters, including its role in public life and contemporary ethics. The lectureship was established at Puget Sound through a gift from Maj. Ianthe Swope in honor of her mother, Jane Hammer Swope.
FOR TICKETS: Admission is free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available online at tickets.pugetsound.edu or Wheelock Information Center, 253.879.3100. Early reservations are recommended.
For directions and a map of the campus:pugetsound.edu/directions
For accessibility information, please contact accessibility@pugetsound.edu or 253.879.3236, or visit pugetsound.edu/accessibility.
Press photos of Sharon Patricia Holland can be downloaded from pugetsound.edu/pressphotos.
Photos on page: Sharon Patricia Holland with Annie; and book by Holland
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