Cirrus@Austlit

'The literary work may be ideally placed to explore animal sentience and to capture human moments of appreciation of animal sentience. Reading occurs in a space of interiority in the first instance. That is, reading is an almost immediate experience of inter-subjectivity with literary characters and representation, arguably less mediated than the use of voiceover in film or visual art representation. Shared reading such as that which occurs in book clubs shifts from a space of individual exploration and interiority to a more communal space of exploration. This paper examines the intersections between literary animal studies and research into themed book clubs through revisiting data from a small regional project conducted on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, Ethics Approval HREC: A/ 13/439. We do so to investigate the impact of group reading on values and beliefs about nonhuman animals. This paper considers book clubs' power to facilitate and articulate pro-animal sentiment, thus contributing to more recent research establishing the cultural and psychological mechanisms behind the power of fiction to make us care for animals (Malecki et al. 2019) as well as that on book clubs as method. Here we reflect on how sociable reading of works that centralise the lives of animals, facilitates the articulation of past inter-species connections and shifts subsequent engagements with other species.' (Publication abstract)