Lisa Brown (by William Lynn)
Practical Ethics just keeps getting better and better. Please join me in welcoming Lisa Brown as a contributing author on the blog. Lisa completed her Masters of Science at the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University. Her thesis was the development of a university-level course curriculum entitled Animalities: Animals, Art and Public Policy. The course is a reflection of Lisa’s passion for exploring animals in film, television, photography, comic books, advertising and other art forms. These underrated and undervalued topics offer a unique perspective on the significance of the represented animal and give scholars the opportunity to uncover both latent and explicit views on animals. One of the aims of the course is to establish the study of pop culture as a legitimate policy tool.
Lisa received her undergraduate degree in political autobiography from Hampshire College. This academic foundation in writing and women’s studies led to active participation in the reproductive rights movement as a freelance writer. However, Lisa found her real passion when she discovered her interest in nonhuman primate welfare, cognition and rights. She is fascinated by the cultural boundary between nonhuman apes and humans, a boundary that has profound legal ramifications for all animals.This focus on nonhuman primates began in 2001 when Lisa started working at Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled. This is an organization which breeds, raises and trains capuchin monkeys to help severely disabled individuals. Despite leaving the organization in 2006 to pursue her master’s degree, she maintains a close relationship with the non-profit and has taken on the role of foster mom to a monkey. Her personal relationship with this monkey (and all monkeys she has befriended) has an ongoing influence on all her pursuits in human-animal studies.
Lisa’s musings on animals in art and popular culture can be found here on Practical Ethics, as well as her blog Animal Inventory, http://animalinventory.net/.
You can contact Lisa at 617-750-5611 or via email at lisabrown@animalinventory.net.
(Photo by Nicole V. Hill)
Lisa Brown :: Sep.22.2007 :: Art, Human-Animal Studies :: 1 Comment »
Hi Lisa, I got to your website via the article in today’s Globe about Helping Hands. I am so glad because I have been reading your wonderful blogs and also got to view Steve Bloom’s magnificent photographs and listen to his very wonderful short movie.
The “ethos” in this block is LOVE and I am feeling this with Panda, my longhair “rescue” cat at my side, purring away. The electricity is palpable. I have always loved animals and feel a deep kinship with them. I have never understood the scientific “dictum” to avoid anthropomorphism as it does seem to me that when we do this, and it is real, we come closer to the truth about our relationship and we are kindred spirits.
I am following a line of amazing visible synchronicity which I have been recording for a long time. Despite the sadness and terrible burden of sorrow around what is happening in the world with respect to lack of respect to our environment I must believe there is a profound raising of consciousness also happening on the planet, because what I am feeling, quite tangibly, is a movement toward love. Perhaps it’s not too late. We can all of us, working together, get the job done. If not now then when?
With best wishes. I will return to your very wonderful and soul full writings.
Ruth Housman
My Diary is in part at: The Hay Library, The Mel Yoken Collection of Letters, Brown University Providence R.I.