Last month, on August 21st, 2025, Philosophy Graduate Student Sofia Huerter successfully defended their dissertation titled: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Domestication, Disability, and Moral Repair". They were overseen by a committee consisting of Jamie Mayerfeld, Department Chair of Law, Societies, & Justice. Along with fellow Philosophy faculty members Michael Blake, Sara Goering, Department Chair and Colin Marshall.
The abstract for their dissertation is as follows: Owing to the unique challenges posed by domestication, the literature on animal captivity has been trapped for years in a gridlock. On the one side, there have been the continued-use advocates, who urge that, were it not for their instrumental value, many domesticated animals would never have been bred. On the other side, there have been the vegan abolitionists, who argue, contrariwise, that non-existence would be preferable to congenital servitude. Despite the newness of the topic, however, neither theoretical position is especially novel. Quite the opposite, the moral debate over domestication has in many ways paralleled the arguments from past social movements, ranging from eugenics to the emancipation of slavery. Therefore, in order to think of alternative possibilities, this project first endeavors to discover why the same theoretical dead-ends have recurred continuously. The primary thesis is that domestication is something humans did to themselves first before other animals, so that, by tracing the history of these intraspecies relations, an “edible complex” is revealed at the heart of the Western psyche. More importantly, however, rather than eschew the argument from marginal cases, this dissertation gestures towards new forms of alliance in which the liminal status of the oppressed, and most especially people with cognitive disabilities, turns out to be an epistemic boon revealed to animal ethics through a radical new aesthetics.
We are all proud of Dr. Huerter and are excited to see all their future accomplishments.
Congrats Sofia!