ANIMAL WRITER
Mike
Jaynes is a professional writer who teaches English and
Western Humanities at the University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Holding the MA in Professional Writing, his research interests include
Animal Rights, Animal Ethics, Biocentrism, Greek Mythology, Ufology, Tom
Robbins, and the Embraced Rogue. He has been published internationally with academic and creative writing running
the gamut from editorial to cover story in peer reviewed journals,
nationally circulated magazines, newspapers, ejournals, and
books. In addition to being published in numerous outlets, he has been interviewed by university Ph.D. programs regarding
Bio-Conservation and has made radio appearances speaking on behalf of animal
rights and the decline of human compassion. He argues against "Sustainable Use," Performing Elephants, Mass Confinement Factory Farming, Whaling, Sealing, Shark Finning, Speciesism and Anthropocentrism. Also, he is working on a full length children's book project titled Elephant Dreams.
Homepages of places that have bought and/or published my articles (See selected links to the left for actual articles):
The Animals Voice (Cover Story)
Alice Walker: New Edition Harold Bloom's New Critical Views
The Central California Poetry Journal
Animal Suffering.ComEureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction
Red Pill Vs. Blue Pill Animal Rights Blog (Portugal)
Aalst Magazine (UK -Now Defunct)
Contemporary Southern Poets of 1998: DLS Books
OTHER WEBSITES TO CHECK OUT
I have a forthcoming interview that will be featured on this great site. More details to come.
Virtual Portfolio and Blog of Pop Culturist and Social Thinker Charles Moss. Not AR oriented
Blog of Dr. Mary McCampbell. Not at all AR oriented, but many find it intriguing.
SELECTED LECTURES, READINGS, AND MEDIA APPEARANCES:
· Paper entitled "From Achilles to House: The Social Freedom of Not Giving a Rip (And Being Good Enough) has been selected for inclusion in the largest Pop Culture Conference in America. I will be delivering the paper in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 3-5. More details to come.
. Fiction reading of short story “Monsters.” The
·
Invited guest of WGOW 102.3 FM’s “FRED the show” hosted by Jeff Stiles
to discuss animal rights issues including factory farming, animal
experimentation, and other issues
·
Interviewed by James C. Koch of the University of Tennessee at
·
Paper entitled, “The Primacy of the Individual: Eighty-Eight Years of
the Female Rogue from E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Capitola Black to Tom Robbins’s
Sissy Hankshaw” accepted to the upcoming
SEWSA Spring 2007 multidisciplinary Women’s Studies Conference, “Talking
Back, Moving Forward: Gender, Culture, and Power” as part of a panel titled,
“Subversion of the Patriarchy through Art.”
·
“An original short course entitled “The Primacy of the Individual:
Rogues from Achilles to House in an increasingly structured society” was
selected for inclusion as a two part keystone event at Rock Point Books
presented on April 7, 2007
·
Creative Approaches to Leadership.” Given in conjunction with
University Bound’s summer program, 2006
·
“A New Method of Teaching
Homer’s Odyssey: Increasing Learning
and Reducing Whining regarding the
ALTHOUGH PRIMARILY CONCENTRATING ON NICHE MARKETS SUCH AS ANIMAL RIGHTS AND UFOLOGY AS WELL AS CREATIVE WRITING CONTRACTS, I AM ALSO IS AVAILABLE FOR ACADEMIC WRITING. PUBLISHED EXAMPLES FOLLOW:
·
“Moving Toward an Understanding of ‘Evil’: ‘Young Goodman Brown,’
University Freshmen, and Semiotics.” Published in Volume 7, number 1 of Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction
(Fall 2006)
· “Teaching Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’: Employing Race, Class, and Gender, with An Annotated Bibliography. “ Published in Volume 5, number 1 of Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction (Fall, 2004). This article was also picked up for inclusion in:
Alice Walker New Edition Bloom’s Modern Critical Views Infobase Publishing:
Upcoming UFO Magazine feature article:
The Logos of
Abduction: Defending Abductees
As a university lecturer, I encounter
all types of students. While largely appearing to be concerned with drooling,
texting, and impregnating each other, every rare now and again a truly keen one
pops his/her head out of the box. Consider last week in my Western Humanities
class during a discussion on Iris, the Roman rainbow messenger goddess of Juno:
A student raises his hand and suggests the description of Iris descending to
Earth in the Aeneid, could have been
inspired by a UFO sighting. Being a
problem child of academia and vocal ufologist, I was overjoyed to see what the
class would do with this notion. Being up-to-the-minute stylishly well dressed
and “rational,” most of the class summarily dismissed his comment. A
particularly meaty jock actually turned to him and said, “Dude. UFOs? Don’t be
a loser.” A gaggle of sorority girls laughed and laughed. During their diatribe
against any student who could actually think aliens exist, we leaned that no
one will take you serious, and stuff, if you believe in that, you know? We also
gleamed that if we talk about little green men, and stuff, we will be lumped in
with those desert redneck freaks in the desert who think they’ve been taken and
probed, you know. Among other insights, we learned that dedicated and
professional types with “real” jobs will never take us seriously if we are UFO
freaks, you know? Having no interest in pushing my beliefs into the malleable
undergraduate mind, I let them ramble their less-than-conscious foolish
diatribe. After all, it is true that I am not one to speak for all the stuffy
“dedicated and professional types” out there. Moreover, I spend most of my considerable
free time hammocking under banana trees or skydiving, so what do I know?
Following class, a few students approached me and wanted to discuss the UFO
comment further. “We’ve heard you’re the UFO guy,” one of them said and wanted
to discuss. Yeppo, said I. So an informational and mind expanding conversation
thus occurred between the four of us about extraterrestrial intelligence and
Greek and Roman Mythology. This conversation took place where these
conversations usually take place: in private, far from the ear of the
mainstream....
For the complete article, see the May, 2008, issue of UFO Magazine.