Rotterdam / Online, 18 October 2024
in association with Otterdam Furry Arts Festival (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
This conference, the first of its kind, aims to bring together a wide range of scholars and enthusiasts from art, design, cultural studies, human-computer interaction, games, history, psychology, sociology, and among other areas. In doing so, this conference is the first step to formalising a field of ‘furry studies’ that explores and examines this creative community. This conference marks the beginning of legitimising the field as a valid site for contemporary research, and to promote global and cross-field collaboration among furry scholars and those invested in this community.
The conference is part of the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, a public event celebrating furry culture and art occurring in Rotterdam on 18-20 October 2024, with remote attendance options available. We encourage the wider furry community to take part as well as researchers, and we look forward to the insights this diverse audience will bring.
Registration
Authors and attendees to Furry Studies 2024 require registration. For online attendees, Zoom links will be provided.
Accommodation is available and can be booked through the system.
Venue
Furry Studies 2024 is proud to be hosted by Nieuwe Instituut at the heart of Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Schedule and Abstracts
You can find the schedule and abstracts on the Schedule & Abstracts page.
Keynote
Joe Strike
Joe Strike is the author of Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture (2017) and Furry Planet: A World Gone Wild (2023).
Joe has been part of furry fandom since 1988 when he received a surprise invitation to something called a “furry party” at a Philadelphia sci-fi convention. The original “kid in a candy store,” Joe spent his formative years in his parents’ Brooklyn “sweet shop,” absorbing the comic books, cartoons, TV shows and sci-fi movies of the day. Joe’s articles on film, TV, animation and related topics have appeared in a variety of publications including the New York Daily News, Newsday and the New York Press. He has been a regular contributor to the entertainment industry website Animation World Network (awn.com) since 2000 and has interviewed countless cartoon luminaries including Hayao Miyazaki, John Lasseter, Brad Bird and Lauren Faust, creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Joe served as a writer/producer of on-air promotional campaigns for Bravo and the Sci-Fi Channel, where he worked with talents like Stan Lee, Ralph Bakshi and the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He has scripted the Nick Jr. TV series Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and is the author of the young adult furry adventure novel The Incredible Hare.
Sponsors
Furry Studies 2024 has received financial support from primary sponsor Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, and academic sponsor Monash Art, Design and Architecture.
Call for Paper
Furries, loosely defined as fans of anthropomorphised animals and zoomorphic humans, have arguably been around since the 1970s. Yet, these remain an under-researched group. This could be due to academia viewing the fandom as “unworthy” of study (Roberts, 2015) the historically negative depiction of the fandom resulting in an aversion to being studied (Leshner, et al., 2018; Plante, et al., 2017), or any of a myriad of other reasons.
The most well-known efforts to study furries come from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (2016; 2023), however many unique perspectives on the fandom are missing or unheard. Furthermore, those studying the furry fandom are largely disconnected from each other and lack a focal point.
Theme: “Being Furry”
For the first furry studies conference, the theme, ”Being Furry”, will allow for a variety of proposals and act as a strong basis for the field’s inception. The conference aims to inspire discussion, especially given that ‘if you ask ten furries to define what furry is, you’ll end up with eleven different answers’ (Plante, 2023).
Rather than deciding on a concrete definition of “what a furry is” with this conference, our point of provocation is “What is Furry”? Here are some topics to start your thinking. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we encourage proposals about “Being Furry” that go beyond these suggestions:
- Furry history: furry media, conventions, or activities.
- Examinations of the fursona: physical ephemera, psychological attachment, aesthetics of costuming and fursuiting, species prevalence or attachment.
- Furry identity: furries and queerness, the relationships between furries and wider LGBTQIA2S+ communities, neurodiversity in the fandom, experiences of BIPOC within the community.
- Sex and the furry fandom: sex positivity, kink culture, NSFW practice and artwork.
- Furry economies: artistic output, “suspiciously wealthy furries”, furries’ charity work, the relationships between furry and ‘big media’ outputs such as Disney films.
We encourage the submission of proposals for academic papers, short workshops, practitioner-based activities, best-practice showcases, and pre-formed panels. We welcome established academics at all stages of their careers, and warmly embrace independent scholars. We also encourage submissions from non-academic furries and welcome other presentation formats such as photographic essays, alternative presentation styles, etc.
Further details can be found on the Otterdam Furry Arts Festival website: https://otterdam.art/
What we’re looking for
Please submit 500-word abstracts and/or proposals for panels, and/or other forms of contribution, by 17:00 UTC on Monday 24 June 2024. All submissions will be double-reviewed by a panel of researchers who are actively involved in furry fandom. You will be notified of the panel’s decision on 15 July 2024. Please ensure that all submissions (if primarily written) are in PDF format.
Submissions must also contain
1) Name of author(s)
2) Affiliation of author(s), if applicable
3) Email address of author(s)
4) Title of proposal
5) A short biography of each author (up to 150 words)
6) References, if applicable
All proposals must be submitted via email to submissions@furrystudies.org with “Furry Studies – Otterdam 2024” in the subject line.
References
Leshner, C.E., Reysen, S., Plante, C., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. and Gerbasi, K.C. (2018) “My Group Is Discriminated against, but I’m Not”: Denial of Personal Discrimination in Furry, Brony, Anime, and General Interest Fan Groups, The Phoenix Papers, 4(1), pp.130-142. DOI: 0.17605/OSF.IO/27PZG.
Plante, C., Reysen, S., Roberts, S., and Gerbasi, K. (2016) FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, FurScience: Ontario.
Plante, C., Reysen, S., Roberts, S. and Gerbasi, K. (2017) ‘Welcome to the jungle: Content creators and fan entitlement in the furry fandom, Journal of Fandom Studies, 5(1), pp.63-80. DOI: 10.1386/jfs.5.1.63_1.
Plante, C., Reysen, S., Adams, C., Roberts, S., Gerbasi, K. (2023) Furscience: A Decade of Psychological Research on the Furry Fandom, Furscience: Texas.
Roberts, S. (2015) Marginalization of Anthropomorphic Identities: Public Perception, Realities, and “Tails” of being a Furry Researcher, in Thurston Howl (ed.) Furries Among Us: Essays on Furries by the Most Prominent Members of the Fandom, Thurston Howl Publications: Nashville.