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Companions, Servants or Signifiers?: The Role of Assistance Dogs in the Late Middle Ages

Companions, Servants or Signifiers?: The Role of Assistance Dogs in the Late Middle Ages

Paper by Rachael Gillibrand

Given at the ‘Going to the Dogs’? A Workshop Series on Research at the Intersection of Disability and Animal Studies, at the University of Leeds on April 13, 2018

“Going to the Dogs” Workshop #2 brought together scholars from England, Scotland, and Poland to discuss the various and complex intersections of disability- and animal-studies research. Discussions centred on talks delivered by Rachael Gillibrand (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds), Dr Ryan Sweet (School of English, University of Leeds), Dr Andy Flack (Department of History, University of Bristol), Dr Neil Pemberton (Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester), and Dr Justyna Włodarczyk (Department of American Literature, University of Warsaw). The talks covered topics including the animal assistants of disabled people in the late-medieval West; nineteenth-century representations of animals with prostheses; connections between historical understandings of animals that live in darkness and vision-impaired people; the role of the caress in 1930s America human-guide-dog partnerships; and current controversies surrounding emotional-support animals in the US.

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Click here to see more videos from this workshop.

You can follow Rachael Gillibrand on her website or on Twitter @r_gillibrand 

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