About me

About me

Susan McHugh, PhD, teaches courses in writing, literary theory, and animal studies at the University of New England in Maine, USA. 

She is the author of three books: Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories against Extinction and Genocide (2019), a volume in the Pennsylvania State University Press’s Anthroposcene series; Animal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines (2011), a volume in the University of Minnesota Press’s Posthumanities series; and Dog (2004; revised edition 2019), a volume in Reaktion Books’ groundbreaking Animal series. Dog has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.

McHugh has co-edited three more books. With a colleague in South Africa, she co-edited Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges and the Arts: Animal Studies in Modern Worlds (2017). With a colleague in the UK, she co-edited Human-animal Studies (2018) and The Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies (2014). With different colleagues in the UK, she co-edited two special issues of scholarly journals: Taxidermic Forms and Fictions for Configurations; and Literary Animals Look (2013) for Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.

She has published dozens more essays on animals and plants in literature, film, art, and popular culture in edited collections and peer-reviewed journals such as Critical Inquiry, Literature and Medicine, and PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.  She has delivered keynote lectures and invited talks in Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Scotland, USA, and Wales. Her ongoing research focuses on the intersections of biological and cultural extinction.

McHugh is Series Co-editor of Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, the first academic book series devoted to literary animal studies. Along with serving as the Humanities Managing Editor for the scholarly journal Society and Animals, she is Editorial Board Member of the academic book series Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures; Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture; Animal Studies Journal; Environment and History; H-Animal Discussion Network; and Humanimalia: A Journal of Human-Animal Interface Studies.  She is an International Associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies.

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