Placing Animals
Geography and Ethics in a Relational World
PAN Works is delighted to announce the “Placing Animals” series in our Medium column.
Curated and edited by our fellow Julie Urbanik, “Placing Animals” will publish essays rooted in animal geography and sympathetic with the mission of PAN Works. We hope to attract accessible and thoughtful interpretations of zoocultural landscapes with an eye to improving animal wellbeing. The series is part of a larger Placing Animals research project at PAN Works where Julie serves as the team lead.
With its mission to build ethical capacity around animals, PAN Works facilitates dialogue and connections between all members of our shared communities. This series takes geography as the point of departure to explore how a geographic lens illuminates new understandings of ethical practices, new forms of collaboration and communication, and new ways of seeing and experiencing our interconnected world. A geographic lens recognizes that relations always happen somewhere and that the where is often foundational to the why.
The vision of the column is to facilitate the expansion of professional perspectives linking animals, geography, and ethics into the public realm. As such, we are seeking short (~1,000 words) text-based and/or audio/visual submissions that are broadly accessible and substantively engaged with the moral-political dimensions of human-animal-nature interactions. We welcome scholars, artists, and those in the public/private sectors working at the intersection of animals, place, space, and scale. While all work should be written in English, we actively encourage submissions from the global community.
Submissions
Submissions should be related to the following broad themes:
1. Current Events: Submissions in this area should focus on situating a current event in place and exploring how a geographic perspective can help illuminate/facilitate ethical dialogue.
2. Daily Life: Where/how do we see/encounter animals and human-animal relations in our daily lives? Store displays, road signs, social media, and popular culture all provide opportunities for reflection on zoocultural landscapes. Submissions in this area should facilitate geographic understandings of how relations are revealed and sedimented into cultures.
3. Mapping/Visualizations: Cartography has been central to geography. How can maps and other forms of geographic visualizations be used to deepen ethical possibilities?
4. Creative Animal Geographies: How can the geographic imagination be used in creative ways to build shared worlds, explore ethical conundrums, and expand our full sensory capacities as a human species?
Workflow
Our publication workflow will follow the process of pitch submission, pitch acceptance, submission of full article, editing, and final publication. Placing Animals will be open to pitches starting July 1st, 2023. The pitching process and guidelines will be made available on our website shortly prior to that date.
For more about our work, please visit us at PAN Works.
Bill Lynn is the founder and president of PAN Works and a fellow at the Marsh Institute of Clark University.
