Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor of the Humanities and professor of law at Vanderbilt University, will appear at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt at 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, for a very special in-store discussion of her latest book, With Dogs at the Edge of Life.
In this original and provocative work, Dayan tackles head on the relationship between dogs and humans. She follows the tracks of dogs in the bayous of Louisiana, the streets of Istanbul, the humane societies of the United States, and in the memories and myths of the humans who love them.
Reorienting ethical and political assumptions through a trans-species engagement that risks as much as it promises, Dayan makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism.
Moving seamlessly between memoir, case law and film, she takes politics and animal studies in a new direction—one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Her unconventional perspective raises hard questions and renews what it means for any animal or human to live in the 21st century.
Dayan is the author of The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, The Story of Cruel and Unusual, and Haiti, History and the Gods. She has also written for The New York Times, the London Review of Books and Boston Review.
Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt is located at 2501 West End Ave. For more information about this event, please contact John Lasiter at (615) 343-2665 or john.lasiter@vanderbilt.edu.