Book launch / Lecture 'Stray: Human-Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene' by Barbara Creed

Friday 26 May 2017, 6-8pm at the Ian Potter Museum of Art

The Ian Potter Museum of Art and The Power Institute are pleased to present a talk by Barbara Creed, followed by a book launch celebrating her latest publication Stray: Human-Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene.

Barbara Creed's timely polemic Stray explores the relationship between human and animal in the context of the stray.

To celebrate the launch of this new publication, Creed, with respondent Dr Lynn Mowson, Vice Chair of the Australasian Animal Studies Association, will discuss the concept of the stray through the visual arts, film and literature, introducing the concept of the anthropogenic stray and exploring the contradictions it embodies. Following the talk, Stray will be officially launched by curator Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art.

A stray, to stray, the act of straying

The stray is the outsider, other, exile, refugee - the one who lives apart from the mainstream or isolated in foreign lands. The idea of straying offers an unusual but rich concept with which to think about the shared animal-human condition and the possible fate of the earth and all species in the Anthropocene. Why do societies label certain animals as strays? How do human animals become strays? Barbara Creed will explore the concept of the stray from earliest times to the present with particular reference to the visual arts, literature and film.

Barbara Creed is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne and an Honorary Professorial Fellow. She is the author of five books on feminism, sexuality, film and media including: the feminist classic, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge); Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality (Allen & Unwin), Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny and Darwin's Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema (both MUP).

Creed’s recent research is on animal studies, the inhuman and social justice issues; her articles have appeared in international collections and journals and have been translated into a range of foreign languages. She is presently on the editorial advisory boards of Cultural Studies Review, eTropic and the Animal Studies Journal and on the boards of the international book series, Anthem and Animal Publics. In 2006 She was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities and is currently the director of the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network (HRAE) at the University of Melbourne.

Stray: Human-Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene will be officially launched by Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art.