Kelli Knox

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Canadian literature and culture; animal studies and animal narratives; kinship; intersubjectivity; haptic communication; material ecocriticism; posthumanism; biopolitics; identity and labour in rural and agricultural spaces; biological and genetic science in literature.

CURRENT RESEARCH:
My current research explores representations of relationships between human and non-human animals situated in rural spaces / agricultural milieus, and how they approach various multi-species entanglements, such as habitation, labour, and care. This project attempts to address how Canadian texts and media portraying these kinds of entanglements are participants in a dialogue that situates human-animal relationships within a context of global pressures and trends that are being exerted on both human and non-human actors involved. Because the multispecies interactions that my work focusses on are largely reliant on physical and emotional connections, I plan to categorize barns and fields as physical ‘contact zones’, seasons and labour as authoritative forces, and touch as central to communication. Critically exploring animal-human relationships in this novel way demonstrates how representations of agricultural spaces can be investigated as places where coexistence, cooperation, violence, and love may all be simultaneously possible.

CONFERENCES:
– “From Me, To You & Back Again: Generosity, Self-Interest, and The Community in Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury.” Department of English MA Colloquium, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON. 3 July. 2019.

SERVICE:
– Committee Member, Department of English MA Colloquium, Department of English, Carleton University, 2019.