Today
Jana Byars talks to
Jean Halley, Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York about her new book
Horse Crazy: Girls and the Lives of Horses (University of Georgia Press, 2019).
Part memoir, part heavy-hitting theoretical exploration, this delightfully readable book explores the relationship between horses and humans, and how girls develop relationships with horses and subvert dominant narratives about gender roles and heteronormativity.
Professor Halley works on the intersection of affective relationships, identity construction, and power, often as these intersections interact with horses. She is the author of
The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets (Palgrave 2012) and
Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy (Illinois, 2007) as well as the editor of
Seeing Straight, Seeing White, and The Affective Turn.
As well as her academic and hybrid academic/memoir work, Halley writes creative non-fiction.
Killing Deer, a beautifully written and slightly devastating short, was published in
Harper’s Magazine.