Companionship is one of humanity’s foundational tenets. Scholars have recently challenged the anthropocentric view of companionship, acknowledging complex relationships of care both across human-animal species lines and within other-than-human species. While the term “companion animal” is relatively recent and derives from the precarious merging of pet-keeping and veterinary practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, animals have kept humans company for millennia, in culturally and historically situated ways.
However, other animals are not humans’ only companions. In this special series, Edge Effects invokes Donna Haraway’s pioneering title and seeks submissions that push beyond static understandings of the companion animal, and explore a “bestiary of agencies, kinds of relatings, and scores of time” toward a complex, interconnected, and co-constituted web of companion species.
Such relationships are often surprising, causing humans to think in new historical or experiential ways about what constitutes a “companion” and what might qualify as a “species.” Although analyses of multispecies companionships commonly employ frameworks of care or love, beyond-human relationships span full emotional and affective spectrums—they can be frustrating, enraging, confusing, disaffectionate, bittersweet, or grief-stricken. Sometimes, such relationships fail or disappear altogether. Regardless of which sentiments define each relationship, companion species present complex, historicized, and culturally significant stories of life in more-than-human worlds.
Join this conversation by bringing methodologies and perspectives from across the humanities and social and natural sciences to explore key themes of relating, personhood, care, proximity, environmental justice, agency, settler colonialism, decolonization, intentionality, and rights in beyond-human companionship. We especially invite non-normative views of multispecies companionship, in addition to reimaginings of care with who/what could be considered “uncharismatic” or “invasive” plant and animal companions.
We welcome submissions that may include, but are not limited to:
- Emergence of multispecies companionship from, with, and through particular times and places
- Narratives of (shared) domestication, labor, exploitation, precarity, conservation, eradication, rehabilitation, or free living with companion species
- Class, racial, ethnic, gender, and other politics in multispecies companionship
- The role of affect and/or complex care in the formation and maintenance of relationships across species
- Perspectives on lesser-studied “companions” such as insects, invertebrates, plants, seeds, oil/plastic, pathogens, ancestors, or “beings beyond”
- Postcolonial, Indigenous, and/or subaltern experiences of multispecies companionship
- Cyborgs, “impurity,” and scales of human “animality” in relation to multispecies companions
- Other-than-human personhood
- Complexities of “service animal” companionship through disability studies
- Critical examinations of companion species in literature, poetry, art, and popular media
- Cross-species sporting companionship
- Perspectives on multispecies companionship through environmental justice, anthropocene animal studies, or extinction studies
Anyone is welcome to submit to this series. As always, we aim to highlight the research and writing of graduate students, postdocs, and early career scholars from a variety of disciplines, as well as work by practitioners and activists who work beyond academia’s walls. We especially welcome submissions by Black and Indigenous people, People of Color, people with disabilities, and those with underrepresented genders, including trans men, women (both cis and trans), nonbinary, and Two-Spirit individuals.
How to Submit
- Due date for submissions: Thursday, February 20, 2025
- If you submit a previously unpublished essay (1,500 to 2,300 words), please send both a complete first draft of your piece and a brief pitch to the Edge Effects team at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu. (We will not send out decisions regarding acceptance/rejection based on your pitch alone.) In your pitch, please indicate how your work helps readers think critically about time and the environment.
- If you wish to submit a creative piece—visual art, poetry, video, photo/comic/graphic essay, a hybrid or multimodal exhibit, etc., we encourage you to get in touch with us at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu before submission to make sure that our website can accommodate your format. Also:
- If a version of your creative piece has been previously exhibited or published elsewhere, please let us know where and when in your pitch.
- Before publication, anyone contributing a creative piece will be asked to write a brief introduction to their work; editors will be happy to work with you on this introduction, and the pitch will give us a good place to begin.
- Accepted pieces are eligible for an honorarium. If you have questions or would like more information about this, please feel free to reach out to us at edgeeffects@nelson.wisc.edu.
- Please note that Edge Effects publishes for interdisciplinary and public audiences. Accepted pieces will move through our editorial process with this in mind.
- If you have any questions about how or what to submit, feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to reading, viewing, and listening to your work!
Featured image: Woman feeding cows in India. Photo by Monthaye, 2019.
