Denise L. McKeown (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
As a folklorist who researches animal-human relationships in general, and people’s decisions to clone their pets in particular, I am interested in how dogs are represented in the cloning process. In popular media, cloning discourses are often polarized as negative or positive. This results in beloved dogs and their clones being positively represented while the rest, whose bodies are integral to the cloning process, are dramatically underrepresented or absent. This paper considers ethnographies of silence, non-human ethnographies, and composite narratives for possible models in my quest to reach a deeper understanding of these representations and to create more nuanced portrayals.
Part of 06-11 Non-Human Animals, Friday, October 14, 2:30 pm–4:30 pm