Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Furry Studies

Furry Studies aims to explore and examine the creative community. This conference marks the beginning of legitimising the field as a valid site for contemporary research, and to promote global and cross-field collaboration among furry scholars and those invested in this community. It brings together a wide range of scholars and enthusiasts from art, design, cultural studies, human-computer interaction, games, history, psychology, sociology, and among other areas. In doing so, this conference is the first step to formalising a field of ‘furry studies.’ The inaugural Furry Studies conference was presented as part of the first Otterdam Furry Arts Festival, a public event that celebrated furry culture and art in Rotterdam on 18-20 October 2024. The recording is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Table of Contents Introduction Reuben Mount, Tom Geller, and Xavier Ho What is Furry? Joe Strike On Being Furry in Furry Places Courtney “Nuka” Plante, Stephen Reysen, Sharon Roberts, and Kathleen Gerbasi I Bark, Therefore I Am: The creation of the fursona and its representation of identity in the furry fandom Reuben Mount Survival Under Authority: Identity Boundaries of Chinese Furries Li Yiming The Past and the Present of the Fandom in East Asia: Cases of Japan and China Tomohiro Inokuchi, Yunfan Mao, and Midoriko Hayashi Furry games, more-than-human perspectives, and ludic relationality Xavier Ho Fostering Communication and Building Support Networks through Interaction with Art, Specific to the Furry Fandom Carrie Gonzales and Joelle Pulver Revisiting Popular Songs through a Furry Lens Ian Martyn Furry Art in the Expanded Field: Creative Research Presentations by Furry Artists Atmus, Auryn, and Theory Feeling Otherwise: A Phenomenological Exploration of Fursona Embodiment for Queer and Trans Furries Hazel Ali Zaman Debating Furry’s Archive: Reorienting Historical Research of the Queerness of Fandom’s Many Performances Brandy J. Lewis Furry History As Media Literacy Alexander Creighton