Savannah DiGregorio

Savannah DiGregorio is an Assistant Professor of Animal Studies in the School of Applied Sciences and Arts. Interdisciplinary in nature, Savannah's work engages what she calls applied animal studies, an embodied critical practice that brings literary and cultural analysis into encounter with the real animals at the center of discourse. More specifically, her research explores the material relationships between race and species, particularly interspecies performances of violence and tenderness in the US South and French Caribbean. In Savannah's current book project, Their Spirits You Can't Digest: Rituals of Race and Species, she combines literary analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and legal studies to uncover more-than-human rituals of race-making in the US South and beyond.

Savannah serves on the Board of Directors for Minding Animals International and also leads the Animal Studies Across Disciplines Symposium at ASU, supported by the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory's Create the Change initiative. The Animal Studies Across Disciplines Symposium centers animals and interspecies relations as critical to questions of environmental justice and planetary health. Bringing together scholars, students, animal professionals, and community members from across the world, the symposium fosters a collaborative network committed to advancing more just and hospitable multispecies futures.

The next symposium will take place in April of 2027.