72.034 - Feminist Approaches to Animal-Focused Education: Illuminating the Intersections and Following New Tracks in Environmental Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Drawing on the conference theme, particularly the question that asks AERA members to consider “persistent problems” and “understudied topics,” including how this knowledge might be leveraged to effect action and change, this session considers what new insights environmental education (EE) might glean from considering the intersections of feminist theories and animal-focused education. Although feminist and animal-focused scholarship may sometimes operate as separate research agendas, the papers in this session demonstrate how concomitant considerations of feminist issues and animal issues “facilitate enriched understanding of interspecies relations, the lives of animals and humans, as well as broader societal relations of power” (Hovorka, 2015, p. 1). These enriched understanding, we posit, offer possibilities for re-imagining environmental education theory, research, and praxis.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Environmental Education

Chair

• Teresa Katrina Lloro-Bidart, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona

Papers

• Fat Pedagogy Gone Wild! Tackling Sexism, Speciesism, and Sizeism in Environmental, Interspecies, and Social Justice Education - Constance L. Russell, Lakehead University

• Teaching for the Always Here: Interspecies Reciprocity and Responsibility - Leesa K. Fawcett, York University

• The Birds Planted the Sunflowers! Feminist Intersections of Animal and Human Performativity in an Urban Community Garden - Teresa Katrina Lloro-Bidart, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona

• Girls That (Can!) Shoot and Boys That (Don't!) Cry: Considering Gender and Sexual Performativity in Hunting Curricula, Pedagogy, and Practice - Joshua James Russell, Canisius College

• Children, Bilbies, and Spirit Bears: Reconsidering Stewardship in Settler Colonial Contexts - Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Western Ontario; Affrica Taylor, University of Canberra

Discussant

• Lauren Corman, Brock University