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Greta Gaard shows how many of the key concerns and objectives of human-animal studies and of related fields such as critical animal studies can be traced back - sometimes directly, at times obliquely - to earlier forms of intersectional activism as well as scholarship by women on behalf of (non)human others. In her account of the emergence of human-animal studies as a distinct institutionalized discourse, Gaard stresses the important contributions made by feminist scholars working at the intersection of fields such as ecofeminism and critical race studies, as well as environmental justice and animal liberation movements. These perspectives have, Gaard argues, greatly contributed to the evolution of human-animal studies into a dynamic and increasingly transdisciplinary field. These developments have opened up numerous lines of inquiry regarding modes of oppression and exploitation across species lines for researchers and students alike while also pointing to, in very practical terms, numerous opportunities for sustainability initiatives, for example, on campuses. Perhaps most importantly, human-animal studies has, Gaard emphasizes, effectively dismantled dominant and destructive conceptions of Western identity, inviting us to reclaim and practice "ecological multispecies kinship, powering and re-storying our collective humanimal resistance and recovery in the Anthropocene."
Starting from the definition that stereotypes are based on categorization and attribution, this article first deals with the relationship between categorization and stereotyping as well as images and imagology. The multitude of categories and stereotypes used in the process of perception raises the question of which categories are decisive in which social contexts and how different social categories are intertwined. Following an examination of categories, stereotypes, and images, these questions of interdependence lead to the fourth important topic of this article: intersectionality.
This article examines striking similarities between stereotypical characters in Caroline Lee Hentz's US-American plantation novel "The Planter's Northern Bride" (1854), and Charlotte Brontë's classic "Jane Eyre" (1847). Especially, a connection can be made between Hentz's Italian "Madwoman in the attic" Claudia, and Brontë's transatlantic Caribbean counterpart Bertha. An intersectional methodology performed through a close reading will show how both women are literally and metaphorically trapped within spaces and stereotypes. This article transfers imagology into a global setting while extending its scope beyond investigating national characteristics.
Nationality traditionally is one of imagology's key terms. In this article, I propose an intersectional understanding of this category, conceiving nationality as an interdependent dynamic. I thus conclude it to be always internally constructed by notions of gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, age, ability, and other identity categories. This complex and multi-layered construct, I argue, is formed narratively. To exemplify this, I analyse practices of stereotyping in Honoré de Balzac's "Illusions perdues" (1843) and Henry James's "The American" (1877) which construct the so-called 'Parisienne' as a synecdoche for nineteenth-century France.