Bri's PhD research is at the intersection of multispecies ethnography, care theory, and feminist sports studies. Her project specifically asks how humans and horses establish mutually relationships, using the American Saddlebred horse showing community as a case study. 

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Women are central participants in the American Saddlebred horse showing community; they care for, about, and with individual horses and the community. Though men socially and economically benefit most from competing in horse shows, most Saddlebred riders are amateur women who care for Saddlebreds—and many understand that they receive care back from their horses. In this project, Bri asks how caring relationships are collaboratively created and cultivated between agentive human-horse teams, through a process of becoming in kind. Becoming in kind allows for species, gender, and breed distinctions made by Saddlebred riders to be maintained in the analysis, making room for individual horses to be understood as agentive persons who act within human social systems.

 

Using a multi-sited ethnographic approach supplemented by archival resources, I will examine how competitive Saddlebred woman-horse teams establish mutually caring relationships, and use care to subvert gender discrimination in the sport. How is care for horses embodied and reproduced through generations of Saddlebred horseback riders? How are caring relationships between women and horses used to undermine sexism in competition? By seeking answers to these questions, Bri hopes to demonstrate that mutual care across species is part of the complex “how” that multispecies anthropology needs.

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This project has been graciously funded by the University of Wisconsin - Madison Graduate School, the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Culture, History, & Environment, and the Virginia Horne Henry Fund.