Keynote Speakers
Dr Kathleen Walker-Meikle
Kathleen Walker-Meikle (PhD, UCL) specialises in animal history, with a particular interest in late medieval pet keeping, the intersection of animals with medicine and magic, and zoonotic diseases.
She has published Medieval Pets (Boydell and Brewer, 2012), the first in depth study of pets in the medieval period. She has also published scholarly articles and chapters along with popular articles in various magazines, on subjects as varied as medieval snakebite treatment, early modern dog jewellery to a crusading goose. Popular books include Cats in Medieval Manuscripts (British Library), Dogs in Medieval Manuscripts (British Library), The Dog Book: Dogs of Historical Distinction (Bloomsbury), The Cat Book: Cats of Historical Distinction (Bloomsbury), and The Horse Book: Horses of Historical Distinction (Bloomsbury).
Professor Ben P. Robertson
Ben P. Robertson, Professor of English, has taught writing and literature at Troy University since 2003. His research emphasizes Romantic-era women writers, especially Elizabeth Inchbald, and travel narratives, and he has developed an interest in nineteenth-century Russian travel literature. He has collaborated recently with Katona Weddle and other colleagues to produce two conferences on literature and the sea held aboard ships, as well as a subsequent essay collection. In 2021, he co-organized an online international Conference on Domestic Cats in Literature with Katona Weddle, as well as sessions on domestic cats at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association annual conference.
Dr Kristyn Vitale
Kristyn Vitale, PhD, is a researcher and educator specializing in cat social cognition, cat behaviour, and the human-cat relationship. Vitale received her PhD in Animal Science from Oregon State University where she researched cat behaviour, taught kitten training classes, and offered cat socialization opportunities. She also received a Master of Environmental Science from Miami University where she studied free-roaming cat social behaviour. Vitale has served as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, a Visiting Research Fellow at Kyoto University, and a Maddie’s Postdoctoral Scholar. Her work has been featured in media outlets such as Science, National Geographic, New York Times, and Scientific American.
Ms Katona Dail Weddle
Katona Dail Weddle is a lecturer of English at Troy University, teaching English composition and surveys of World Literature. She earned an MA in English from the University of Central Missouri. Her earlier research and publications include Latina literature and dance as a metaphorical language. She co-coordinated two Literature at Sea conferences and co-edited The Sea in the Literary Imagination: Global Perspectives. Most recently, her interest focuses on domestic cats in literature, which has resulted in her co-coordination of the 2021 international Domestic Cats in Literature conference and presentation of her research at various conferences.