Jody Berland

CAT AND MOUSE : Iconographics of Nature and Desire

The popularity of digital cat photographs circulating through the Internet and across North American visual culture provides an occasion for a critical exploration of human–cat relations in contemporary culture. The representation of animals in traditional and digital photography is discussed in relation to the technologies of visual culture, human–animal relations, the companion animals debate, the social history of cats, and species interactions in urban culture. The highly ambiguous physical and symbolic status of cats and the proliferation of human–cat networks in urban and electronic space are part of an emergent ‘post-human’ landscape in which the mutual dependency of diverse animals is more important (if no less volatile) than the unique qualities of distinct species.

The elephant in the classroom

Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFE/ME) is an invisible disability that forces researchers to delineate new boundaries between illness and impairment, and between medical knowledge and patients’ experience. As a neurological impairment, this condition attacks memory and cognition, which paradoxically become the focus of patients’ own accounts of their experience and understanding. This paper addresses the pedagogical implications of this invisible disability. Drawing on emergent research on the social ties and social memory of elephants, this paper compares the forgetting in and about invisible disabilities with the cultures of remembering and caring exemplified by the elephant who ‘never forgets’. Just as the elephant exemplifies the interdependency of social relations and memory, so teachers and administrators can acknowledge different kinds of memory and expectations of memory and social process in pedagogical environments.