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Giving Voice to Animals

Shelby Van Pelt’s bestselling novel _Remarkably Bright Creatures_ (2022), this year’s Centre County Reads selection, focuses on an unlikely friendship between a widow working the night shift at a West Coast aquarium and one of the animals kept “captive” there, a curmudgeonly but remarkably intelligent Pacific octopus named Marcellus. Readers have been especially moved by Marcellus’s deeds and his words, as he is afforded a human-like voice across the narrative. The panelists on this roundtable discussion--sponsored by the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS) at Penn State--will use Van Pelt’s novel as a launch point for a broader discussion about depictions of animals in literature and other media, and the possibilities and limitations of giving voice to nonhuman creatures.

Featured Panelists:

Nigel Rothfels, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Benjamin Hale, Writer in Residence, Bard College

Jessica Gall Myrick, Professor of Media Studies, Penn State

Feb 15, 2023 04:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)