Nik Taylor

Queer Entanglements provides the first comprehensive account of the intersections of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, and non-binary people's lives with the lives of animals. Exploring diverse topics such as domestic violence, grief following the loss of an animal, veganism, cruelty-free makeup products, Pride events, and community activism, the book offers a theoretical and empirical basis for understanding the contexts that bring together human and animal lives. By using real-world examples, it provides a lively and engaging view of what it means to think about the connections between animal and human lives, even when human experiences operate at the expense of animal wellbeing. This critical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspective on human-animal relations will be of interest to scholars and students in human-animal studies, psychology, sociology, social work, and cultural and gender studies.

This book was originally made available to attendees of Doomsday 11 in May 2022. Doomsday is the world's premier annual gathering to celebrate the mysterious world of Bizarre Magic, Storytelling Magic and paranormal high-strangeness. Making Dark Magicks contains: A foreword by Ashton Carter My 'Making Dark Magicks' lecture in full Two illustrated articles on two of the shows I discuss in my lecture The full illustrated script of 'Phantasmagoria: Stories To Be Told Out' (which includes 13 mini scripts for effects, including the needle swallow script I talked about in the lecture) A write up of my propless storytelling effect 'The Gift of Hermes' which leaves your audience with a little bit of magical thinking to take with them after your show. I hope it will be useful to you when making your own magicks.

Queer Entanglements provides the first comprehensive account of the intersections of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, and non-binary people's lives with the lives of animals. Exploring diverse topics such as domestic violence, grief following the loss of an animal, veganism, cruelty-free makeup products, Pride events, and community activism, the book offers a theoretical and empirical basis for understanding the contexts that bring together human and animal lives. By using real-world examples, it provides a lively and engaging view of what it means to think about the connections between animal and human lives, even when human experiences operate at the expense of animal wellbeing. This critical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspective on human-animal relations will be of interest to scholars and students in human-animal studies, psychology, sociology, social work, and cultural and gender studies.

In this book, Nik Taylor and Heather Fraser consider how we might better understand human-animal companionship in the context of domestic violence. The authors advocate an intersectional feminist understanding, drawing on a variety of data from numerous projects they have conducted with people, about their companion animals and links between domestic violence and animal abuse, arguing for a new understanding that enables animals to be constituted as victims of domestic violence in their own right. The chapters analyse the mutual, loving connections that can be formed across species, and in households where there is domestic violence. Companion Animals and Domestic Violence also speaks to the potentially soothing, healing and recovery oriented aspects of human-companion animal relationships before, during and after the violence, and will be of interest to various academic disciplines including social work, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, geography, as wellas to professionals working in domestic violence or animal welfare service provision.

This book argues that qualitative methods, ethnography included, have tended to focus on the human at the cost of understanding humans and animals in relation, and that ethnography should evolve to account for the relationships between humans and other species. Intellectual recognition of this has arrived within the field of human-animal studies and in the philosophical development of posthumanism but there are few practical guidelines for research. Taking this problem as a starting point, the authors draw on a wide array of examples from visual methods, ethnodrama, poetry and movement studies to consider the political, philosophical and practical consequences of posthuman methods. They outline the possibilities for creative new forms of ethnography that eschew simplistic binaries between humans and animals. Ethnography after Humanism suggests how researchers could conduct different forms of fieldwork and writing to include animals more fruitfully and will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including human-animal studies, sociology, criminology, animal geography, anthropology, social theory and natural resources.

This book employs an an intersectional feminist approach to highlight how research and teaching agendas are being skewed by commercialized, corporatized and commodified values and assumptions implicit in the neoliberalization of the academy. The authors combine 50 years of academic experience and focus on species, gender and class as they document the hazardous consequences of seeing people as instruments and knowledge as a form of capital. Personal-political examples are provided to illustrate some of the challenges but also opportunities facing activist scholars trying to resist neoliberalism. Heartfelt, frank, and unashamedly emotional, the book is a rallying cry for academics to defend their role as public intellectuals, to work together with communities, including those most negatively affected by neoliberalism and the corportatization of knowledge.

Whereas animals have played a central part in human society over the years, when it comes to the social sciences they have largely been neglected. However, interest in Human & Animal Studies (HAS) has grown exponentially in recent years, giving rise to university and college courses around the world specifically on this compelling and vital subject. Considering topics ranging from the human & animal bond, meat eating, and animals in entertainment, this book presents key concepts in simple and easy-to-understand ways as it covers the breadth of empirical work currently being done in the field. Through an examination of ideas such as anthropocentrism and the social construction of animals, it looks at how animals are symbolically transformed, presented, and re-presented as part of human culture. Ultimately, the book argues that there is nothing "natural" about our social relations with animals, but that animals are made use of and understood through a human lens. Humans, Animals, and Society spans the diverse interests of the HAS community and is necessary reading for students and the general public looking to better understand our relationship with animals.

A history of Huddersfield