ABSTRACT
Animal studies is founded on the concept that humans are not superior, exceptional beings who, unlike nonhuman animals, transcend their biology. It joins with the theoretical positions of posthumanism, an intellectual location seeking to destabilize conventional notions of the human and its discursive centrality, and transbiology, the exploration of interventions into human and nonhuman animal biology. Fairy tales offer a vast archive of species-queer narratives that detach “species” from human-centered hierarchies. As such, animal studies, posthumanism, and transbiology can benefit from looking to fairy tales and fairy-tale studies for representations of destabilized and transformed human and nonhuman animal relations.
