S8E1 - Trans-Speciesism and the MARS Test with Natalie Khazaal, Tobias Linné, and Ellen Gorsevski
The Animal Turn podcast launches Season 8 with a dive into the intersections of media, racism, and speciesism. Tobias Linné, Ellen Gorsevski, and Natalie Khazaal join Claudia on the show to discuss how race and species intersect each other in animated film and the development of their Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test to evaluate the ways in which they do.
Natalie Khazaal is an associate professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech and the director of the Arabic and Middle East & North Africa programs. She is also an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellow for her work on Arab atheists. She grew up in Burgas—the largest port city on the Black Sea, and received her doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Learn more about Natalie here.
Ellen W. Gorsevski is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication and affiliated faculty in transdisciplinary areas of American Culture Studies; Peace and Conflict Studies; Rhetoric and Writing Studies; and Women’s Gender Sexuality Studies at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). She teaches classes such as: Environmental Communication; Activism and Engagement; Environmental Rhetoric and Rhetorics of Sustainability. Her research explores rhetoric of peacebuilding, social and environmental justice; critical animal rhetoric and media studies; and critical discourse analysis. Books she has authored include Dangerous Women: The Rhetoric of the Women Nobel Peace Laureates (2014) and Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric (2004). She has published articles in scholarly journals such as Journal of Multicultural Discourses; Journal of Black Studies; Quarterly Journal of Speech; and Environmental Communication. Learn more about Ellen here.
Tobias Linné holds a PhD in Sociology and is Assistant Professor in Media and Communication studies at Lund University. He founded the course in Critical Animal Studies at Lund University in 2012 and has acted as director of the Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network (LUCASN) since its inception in 2016. His research deals primarily with animals in the dairy industry and the intersections of food, gender, race and species. Learn more about Tobias here.
Mentioned:
Media, Racism, Speciesism: Issues and Solutions for Creaturely Racism in the Anthropocene edited by Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski and Tobias Linné
Monsters, Heroes, and Others: Unpacking Power in Media and Politics through Race or Species a symposium at Georgia Tech
Bonus: Animals in Media on The Animal Turn
Many meats and many milks? by Tobias Linné
Nonbelievers, apostates, and atheists in the Muslim world by Natalie Khazaal
Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberlé Crenshaw
Critical Animal and Media Studies edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman
The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams
Connecting racial and species justice: Towards an Afrocentric animal advocacy by Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues
Afro-Dog by Bénédicte Boisseron
Guidelines for Animals and Media by Carrie Freeman and Debra Merskin
The dreaded comparison: human and animal slavery by Marjorie Spiegel
”It is vital to link oppressions in our minds, to look for the common, shared aspects, and work against them as one, rather than prioritizing victims' suffering. For when we prioritize we are in effect becoming one with the "master”. We are deciding that one individual or group is more important than another, that one individual's pain is less important than that of the next” (Marjorie Spiegel – The Dreaded Comparison)
Credits: Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; and thethe pollination project, the School of Modern Language, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, as well as the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech University for co-sponsoring this season. The bed music was composed by Gordon Clarke and the logo designed by Jeremy John. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by Claudia Hirtenfelder.