Animal Studies, Postcolonial Literature, and Multispecies Modernity: The Intersections, Politics, and Evolution of the Discipline

In this final episode on postcolonial literature and animal studies, Sundhya Walther, author of Multispecies Modernity: Disorderly Life in Postcolonial Literature, chats about the evolution of the animal studies discipline. She discusses her interdisciplinary approach to research, engaging with fields like conservation biology, anthropology, and urban studies to better interpret animal-human interactions. Sundhya also digs into the future of animal studies, the field’s Euro-American limitations, and how its intersection with environmental studies may progress into a broader ecological field of environmental humanities. Last, she reflects on how the climate crisis factors into the discipline, and the inherent politics of this research, noting that, “our work is a political commitment, is an ethical commitment—to me, that’s absolutely central and I don’t see how you could practice in these fields without having a politics, without having an ethical approach.”

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