Contrary to common assumptions, questions about the value and nature of animals were taken seriously in pre-modern thought. Scholars have explored ancient Greek and Indian discussions of animals, but little attention has been paid to the contribution of Islamic culture, which produced for instance philosophical and scientific works on animals, moralizing fables featuring animal characters, and treatises on veterinary medicine and on the types and uses of animals. The project will uncover the changing conceptions of animals revealed in such works, taking an innovative approach which explores the interaction between descriptive and normative accounts of animals.

Questions about Islam, homosexuality, and othering are particularly salient in this age of increasingly violent white nationalism and right-wing homophobic rhetoric. Studying how people find ways to respond to Islamophobia, racism, and homophobia together can help us understand the potential for strategic alliance formations among stigmatized groups.

On the October 3, 2014 episode of the HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel included New York Times bestselling author (and key figure in the New Atheism movement) Sam Harris; actor/filmmaker Ben Affleck; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof; and former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele. During the panel’s discussion, both Bill Maher and Sam Harris asserted that Islam fundamentally clashes with liberal principles, yet liberals in the U.S. fail to point this out because of their commitment to political correctness. The only solution to this problem, Maher and Harris argued, was for the West to throw support behind “nominal Muslims”...