After surveying work on the definition, history, possible mechanisms, and relative efficacy of Animal-Assisted Activities (AAA) and Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT), this presentation discusses how an expanded framework for inquiry — one that brings together ideas from transspecies anthropology, critical animal studies, disability studies, and narrative theory — can generate productive questions about narratives that portray animals as assisting children diagnosed with intellectual disabilities such as autism. I use several example narratives involving animal assistants to explore how understandings of the human/nonhuman boundary link up with constructions of the contrast between ability and disability, normality and abnormality.
– Professor David Herman, Department of English Studies, Durham University
Tuesday 10th December 2013
Open to all
Please RSVP to: [email protected]
Read about Professor David Herman’s latest publication, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind (MIT, 2013) here.