UNE’s Susan McHugh publishes research essay on human-animal interactions

UNE’s Susan McHugh, Ph.D., professor of English with the School of Arts and Humanities, recently published an essay in Humanimalia, an interdisciplinary journal that explores and advances the scholarship on human-animal relations and promotes dialogue between the academic community and those working closely with animals in nonacademic fields.

McHugh’s essay, “Apace: Dogwalking, Kinaesthetic Empathy, and Posthuman Ethos in the Great North Woods,” seeks to inspire extensions of empathy toward the ineffable relations that structure nature-culture borderlands. According to McHugh, the essay “ponders an idiosyncratic collection of evidence of more-than-human comings and goings, witnessed on two feet, accompanied by four more, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.”

McHugh achieves this by writing about close-range encounters with wildlife she experienced on her daily dog walks across the seasons. Her aim is to model the development of what she describes as a posthuman ethos through developing a storied appreciation for the elusive, unnamed intimacies of nonhuman neighborliness that include, but are not limited to, witnessing dying and death.

Also published in the current edition of Humanimalia is a review by Emelia Quinn, assistant professor of world literatures and environmental humanities at the University of Amsterdam, of McHugh’s latest book, “Animal Satire,” which McHugh wrote in collaboration with colleague Robert McKay.

At UNE, McHugh researches and teaches courses in writing, literary theory, animal studies, and plant studies. She has delivered keynote lectures and invited talks in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. Her ongoing research focuses on the intersections of biological and cultural extinction.