Format: online (April 18th-20th) and on Shaninka campus (April 21st)
Language: Russian, English
Moderators: Mark Mefed (graduate of MSSES (Shaninka), independent researcher), Iana Fishova (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, independent researcher)

Animal studies is an interdisciplinary field based on scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, emphasizing the study of past and present relationships between humans and nonhuman animals, the representation of those relationships, their ethical implications, and their social, political, and ecological aspects. The field congregates critical views on animal exploitation, human-animal relationships, an intersectional approach to animal rights and ethics issues, analysis of speciesism and anthropocentrism in human cultures, politics, philosophy, literature, education, posthuman and vegan studies. Researchers may ethically investigate animals, directly observing and interacting with them to study their behavior, emotional experiences, consciousness, and communication practices. Additionally, they can be examined indirectly by analyzing representations of animal life in diverse mediums like art, literature, religious texts, national legislation concerning animals, and the portrayal of pets across social media platforms.
The concept and the distinction of ‘animal’ as opposed to ‘human’ is meaningful in many aspects. Membership in the moral and political community depends on where that line of distinction is drawn, which in turn serves as the basis for discriminatory practices against various groups such as children, women, people with disabilities, refugees, ethnic and other minorities. Predominant philosophical, political, and religious institutions deeming these groups as possessing ‘animal’ qualities culminates in them suffering varying degrees of exclusion (and thus being treated as so-called ‘others’), which allows for discrimination and disregard of their agency. Critical animal studies aim to reflect on the reduction of humans to animals, while not only highlighting and emphasizing excluded groups and nonhuman animals but also attempting to radically change power institutions.
At the same time, non-human animal agency consistently manifests itself. As such, animals do not passively exist within the boundaries defined by humans but respond and resist this unbalanced power relationship. Additionally, animals have complex forms of communication, diverse ways of being, and sentient experiences. Therefore animals are important not solely as theoretical figures; they are also significant as living beings of flesh and blood that compel us to reassess our everyday lives.
The main question that our section poses is, ‘How should we address the existence of non-human animals within our theoretical paradigms and reality?’ We will delve into the examination of tangible and symbolic animals, inspect the potential for a multispecies democracy within capitalism, consider the contributions of posthumanism and continental philosophy to animal rights and well-being, analyze how cultural depictions of animals mirror human concerns and values, and assess how the field of vegan studies can critically enhance and broaden our understanding of animal studies.
The section’s Telegram channel: Kittens and Cows: (Critical) Animal Studies