Open Access

Greta Gaard

• 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."