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“Multispecies encounters” Introduction
Sam Allen, Lilly Elrod, Mia Godleski, and Piyesone Hunthant—The 2024 

Digital Literature Review Editorial Team 

 Multispecies theory and its respective research and scholarship is 
extensive, and at times, complicated. Put most simply, the theo-

ry works to dissolve the idea that the human species is something ultimate, 
individual, solitary, or somehow separate from other living and nonliving 
beings. Multispecies theorists hope to influence the study of human his-
tory, biology, and the humanities to include the lives and histories of non-
human beings—no matter if they are categorized as living or nonliving. 
However, in a multispecies exploration of the world, scholars must ask 
this first: what is a species? 

 Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, and Ursula Münster describe the 
nonhuman areas of study in “Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of 
Attentiveness” as fungi, plants, microorganisms, and animals (3), but also 
as stones, weather systems, technology, artificial intelligence, rivers and 
mountains, and the unseen beyond—ghosts, gods, and spirits (4). In “Arts 
of Inclusion, or How to Love a Mushroom” by Anna Tsing, she explores 
the intricate cities of fungi that exist beneath our feet, and in Staying with 
the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna Haraway tries to de-
fine the ongoing and ever-connected nature of the ecosystem. She explores 
how each thread of life and nonlife is connected, and to tell the stories of 
the unknown is to explore “the patterning of possible worlds and possible 
times” (31), which is also, somehow, a way of multispecies scholarship. 

 In this journal, essayists explore and analyze works of literature and 
film with multispecies theory as their guidebook. In analyzing the nonhu-
man and nonliving characters and story elements in literature, readers can 
understand not only how nonhuman species impact our day-to-day life, 
but also how nonhuman lives and histories are worth studying and appre-
ciating on their own. Multispecies theory draws lines between academic 



subjects, over cultural sectors and political boundaries, and dissects human 
ideas of time, life, and ways of being. When relating this theory to literary 
criticism, essayists in “Multispecies Encounters” explored the nonhuman 
narrator, plant and animal life as independent actors, the complications 
with an anthropomorphized animal character, and how science-fiction 
genre expectations can lend to viewing our environment as an independent 
organism.

 In our own ways, the writers of the following essays were inspired by 
the work of multispecies scholars. We pulled threads to reveal the non-
human players in the stories we know well, we listened when the authors 
gave them a voice, and paid attention to their history, their meaning, and 
their futures. Our results were as expansive as the topic. In Eden Hatha-
way’s “Anthropomorphism Unveiled: A Case Analysis of Isle of Dogs 
and Its Role in Multispecies Narratives,” the anthropomorphized animal 
allows viewers to better empathize with the dogs in the story and grow to 
consider the individual and shared history that exists between them. Ha-
thaway reveals the knots that connect the humans and the dogs, and how 
human behavior can both negatively and positively shape the lives of the 
nonhuman beings in their environment. 

 The dogs in Isle of Dogs serve as the story’s narrators, and as the film 
hands over the narrative responsibility over to the nonhuman, it reveals a 
previously unknown perspective to the human reader. Elif Shafak’s novel 
The Island of Missing Trees, analyzed by two authors in this journal, tells 
parts of the novel’s story from the perspective of a female fig tree. In Bella 
Hughes’s essay “The Trees Speak for Themselves: How Non-Human Nar-
rators in Fiction Influence Multispecies Encounters,” she considers how 
this narrator educates the human reader on how plants experience both 
positive and negative life events and how their own interactions and com-
munications with other nonliving species can better influence how humans 
treat the environment. Their analysis serves as an example of how literary 
endeavors to give voices to nonhuman beings expands beyond the Anthro-

Introduction



pocentric worldview. 

 Nonhuman beings in literature often serve as symbols and motifs, 
which help readers better understand our relationship to those beings. 
Katelyn Mathew in “Exploring Religious Animal Symbolism in Louise 
Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves” explores religious animal symbolism in 
literature, and how it represents human emotion and premonition, both 
positive and negative, and how the symbolism changes over cultures and 
religions. Her analysis sheds a light on the complicated relationships be-
tween the colonizer and the colonized, and how sometimes contrasting 
animal symbolism represents power imbalances. This can also mean that 
natures and divines are inseparable, and it may cause conflicts if we divert 
our attention from them. 

 The representation of plants and animals in literature is complicated, 
and varies across genres. In Lilly Elrod’s “An Analysis of the Film Bee 
Movie and Multispecies Theory,” she provides an insight into how the film 
represents the true interactions that bees have with the world around them, 
but also how anthropomorphism can have inaccuracies that are harmful 
to how people interact and think of the insect. In Mia Godleski’s essay 
“The Art of Being Attentive in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway,” Godleski 
writes about how flowers are not just a literary symbol, but have agency 
as a living being to keep Mrs. Dalloway calm during moments of duress. 
Rather than analyzing the flowers by their relevance to a human life, God-
leski emphasizes their inherent individuality—opening up literary criti-
cism to involve these seemingly passive players in their analyses. 

 But why do we give plants agency? In “My Philodendron’s Favorite 
Music is Beethoven: Considerations of Plant Sentience,” Milo Hardison 
explores the science behind plant sentience, and how Island of Missing 
Trees explores the biological ways in which plants behave and operate on 
their own, giving them an individual presence outside of human involve-
ment. In the same vein, fiction allows authors to explore ideas that we 

Introduction



have difficulty understanding from a human perspective, like plant sen-
tience and environmental independence. In “Surrendering the Self: The 
Posthuman World in Vandermeer’s Annihilation,” Sam Allen explores 
the science-fiction genre’s ability to explore the power of an unstoppable 
nature, and how humans truly serve as one evolutionary piece in our envi-
ronment. 

 The world humans live in contains an endless multitude of multispe-
cies interactions—and our essayists in “Multispecies Encounters” aim to 
prove this argument in their extensive literary and film analysis. Though 
our everyday lives are so heavily influenced by the interactions we have 
with various species, we do not tend to acknowledge these significant in-
teractions. So much of history and of our own lives centers on interactions 
between humans. Because of this, only a small fraction of the world’s 
history, as well as our own, individual histories, gets told. By ignoring the 
multitude of species around us as well as the interactions we have with 
them, we are disregarding the magnitude of the environments that we are a 
part of—the environments that do so much to care for and provide for us, 
but also have beautiful ways of existing on their own. 

Introduction



Works Cited

Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the 
Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 30–57. JSTOR, 
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q. 

Haraway, Donna. “When Species Meet: Introduction.” When Species 
Meet, University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Tsing, Anna. “Arts of Inclusion, or, How to Love a Mushroom.” Unloved 
Others: Death of the Disregarded in the Time of Extinction, edited by 
Monique Rooney, Australian Humanities Review, May 2011. 

van Dooren, Thom, et al. “Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of 
Attentiveness.” Environmental Humanities, Duke University Press, 
1 May 2016, read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/
article/8/1/1/61679/Multispecies-StudiesCultivating-Arts-of.

Introduction


	Anthropomorphism Unveiled: A Case Analysis of An Isle of Dogs and It’s Role in Mediating Multispecies Narratives
	Eden Hathaway
	
The Trees Speak for Themselves: How Non-Human Narrators in Fiction Influence Multispecies Encounters
	Bella Hughes
	
Exploring Religious Animal Symbolism in Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves
	Katelyn Mathew
	
An Analysis of the film Bee Movie and Multispecies Theory
	Lilly Elrod
	The Art of Being Attentive in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
	Mia Godleski
	
My Philodendron’s Favorite Music is Beethoven: Considerations of Plant Sentience
	Milo Hardison
	
Surrendering the Self: The Posthuman World in Vandermeer’s Annihilation
	Sam Allen

