ISU Professor and American Society for Theatre Research Visit the Seattle Zoo to Tour “Zoo Doo”

From Nov. 14-17, 2024, Dr. Marin Laufenberg (Teaching Assistant Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish MA Program at ISU) attended the American Society for Theatre Research annual conference in Seattle, Washington where she participated as a member of the Animals in Performance Working Group. The working group brings together scholars and theatre practitioners from all over the world who research the intersections of the non-human (or the animal) and the human in the fields of theatre and performance. As part of the conference activities, Laufenberg and other theatre professor colleagues visited the Woodland Park Zoo and toured the behind-the-scenes area where they compost all of their animal scat (the "Zoo Doo" yard), in order to think through themes of decomposition and regeneration associated with animals. The work group learned a lot about the innovative compost process at the zoo and how it connects the zoo animals and the surrounding community. To learn more about the Woodland Park Zoo’s animal doo composting, see this site: https://www.zoo.org/zoodoo  

As part of the conference, Dr. Laufenberg also presented her original research on the Argentine grotesque´s ghostly influences in the contemporary 2014 film Relatos salvajes in which human-animal boundaries are blurred to turn the tables and show that perhaps the more bestial and savage species is in fact the human, not the animal. As she works on this new research, she is also thinking through and planning a new summer 2025 Spanish MA course which will be titled, "Animal Studies in Latin American Literature". 

Dr. Laufenberg’s son joined her at the conference as well and helped her to accept an award that the society gave her for her innovative research into the Argentine neo-grotesco criollo in contemporary film and theatre. The award fully supported her travel to and participation in the 2024 conference events. She accepted the 2024 David Keller Travel Grant at an award ceremony on Friday, Nov. 15.