The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves
by Kathryn Gillespie, Ph.D.
From the rustle of a crow’s wings to the cool touch of moss on a stone wall, to the quiet determination of a worm crossing a sidewalk, "The Sound of Feathers" invites readers to notice the small wonders of life all around them. These fleeting details hold surprising truths about humanity’s connection to nature, the complex relationships of care and harm in which we are entangled, our responsibilities to other species and what it means to be fully present in the world. Through vivid storytelling and deeply personal reflections, Kathryn Gillespie invites us to slow down, pay attention and think differently about our everyday lives so that we might imagine shared futures of flourishing. She urges us to confront the forces that separate us from the natural world and find more compassionate ways of living in harmony with it. Gillespie reminds us that the quiet, often overlooked moments in life are where the most profound insights and connections begin.
Kathryn Gillespie, Ph.D., is a writer, researcher, and educator. Her research and teaching interests focus on: ethnography and qualitative methods; feminist and multispecies theory and methods; food and agriculture; political economy; critical animal studies; and human-environment relations. Her latest book, The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves (Duke University Press, 2026) is about the power of attentiveness to build gentler futures with those other animals with whom we share a world.
She is also the author of The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 (University of Chicago Press, 2018). She has published in numerous scholarly journals and has co-edited three books:
- Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field (University of California Press, 2018, co-edited with Patricia J. Lopez).
- Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World (Routledge, 2015, co-edited with Rosemary-Claire Collard).
- Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life and Grievable Death (Routledge, 2015, co-edited with Patricia J. Lopez).
Gillespie was formerly a postdoctoral scholar in applied environment and sustainability studies online master's program at the University of Kentucky, an animal studies postdoctoral fellow at Wesleyan University (2016-2018) and a lecturer at the University of Washington. She has volunteered with Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (a Puget Sound, Washington-based prison education organization), Food Empowerment Project (a food justice organization in Cotati, California) and Pigs Peace Sanctuary (a sanctuary for pigs in Stanwood, Washington). She is vice president of research & strategy for Farm Forward.
This presentation will be held in Zoom in Room 191 Gatton.