Vita Sleigh investigates the connections between animal consent, interspecies erotics, and the (at times violent) power differentials that characterize commonly experienced relationships with animals. How can we attend to the otherness of creatures and hold our attractions to them with care?
In reviewing Robert Macfarlane’s forthcoming book IS A RIVER ALIVE?, Anna Christensen Spydell connects the colonial mistreatment and dehumanization of Indigenous and immigrant “Others” to the pollution and objectification of rivers around the world.
There’s a sinking swamp in the middle of Manhattan that has kept a host of species safe for millennia. Nat Xu uses the space and their work in it to reflect on Indigenous stewardship, more-than-human precarity, and restorative conservation as an imperfect practice.
Mara Dicenta Vilker, Micah Dill, and Elena McCullough explore herring as interspecies companions, bringing together herring restoration discourse with fishers’ oral histories.
Companionship across species is not always simple, nor always rewarding, but perhaps says something about respect for more-than-human beings. In this poem and short essay, Kelsey Dayle John reflects on how the complex fear of witnessing her two dogs fight shaped her approach to multispecies relations.
Lizzie Smith describes the oft-overlooked living skin of the desert: biological soil crusts or “biocrusts.” Biocrust bundles show that deserts are full of life, wonder, and instructions for a more interconnected future.
Inspired by volunteering on equestrian trail crews in the Cascade Mountains, Kathleen Gekiere argues wilderness is a multispecies performance, embodied by the practices of horses and humans on the trail.
In this series keynote, professor emerita and historian Harriet Ritvo sets the stage for further investigation of “companion species.” She introduces the varied threads of animal companionship—from influence and impact to proximal, favored reciprocity.
Erica Cherepko illustrates ways in which Japan’s longstanding, community-based marine conservation utilizes “satoumi” to blend tradition and innovation, protecting coastal ecosystems.
Katherine Gregory explores how Cauleen Smith’s short film REMOTE VIEWING (2011) excavates buried histories of racial violence and challenges audiences to rethink who has the right to shape the land.
