To what extent, and in what manner, do storytelling practices accomodate nonhuman subjects and their modalities of experience, and how can contemporary narrative study shed light on interspecies interactions and entanglements? In Narratology beyond the Human, David Herman addresses these questions through a cross-disciplinary approach to post-Darwinian narratives concerned with animals and human-animal relationships. Herman considers the enabling and constraining effects of different narrative media, examining a range of fictional and nonfictional texts disseminated in print, comics and graphic novels, and film. In focusing on techniques such as the use of animal narrators, alternation between human and nonhuman perspectives, the embedding of stories within stories, and others, the book explores how specific strategies for portraying nonhuman agents both emerge from and contributes to broader attitudes toward animal life. Herman argues that existing frameworks for narrative inquiry must be modified to take into account how stories are interwoven with cultural ontologies, or understandings of what sorts of beings populate the world and how they relate to humans. Showing how questions of narrative bear on ideas of species difference and assumptions about animal minds, Narratology beyond the Human underscores our inextricable interconnectedness with other forms of creatural life and suggests that stories can be used to resituate imaginaries of human action in a more-than-human world.

Provides cross-disciplinary perspectives on the study of animals in humanitiesThis volume critically investigates current topics and disciplines that are affected, enriched or put into dispute by the burgeoning scholarship on Animal Studies. What new questions and modes of research need come into play if we are to seriously acknowledge our entanglements with other animals? World-leading scholars from a range of disciplines, including Literature, Philosophy, Art, Biosemiotics, and Geography, set the agenda for Animal Studies today. Rather than a narrow specialism, the 35 newly commissioned essays in this book show how we think of other animals to be intrinsic to fields as major as ethics, economies as widespread as capitalism and relations as common as friendship.The volume contains original, cutting-edge research and opens up new methods, alignments, directions as well as challenges for the future of Animal Studies. Uniquely, the chapters each focus on a single topic, from 'Abjection' to 'Voice' and from 'Affection' to 'Technology', thus embedding the animal question as central to contemporary concerns across a wide range of disciplines.Key FeaturesProvides in one work prominent scholars in animal studies and their reflections on the trajectory of the fieldEmbeds the 'animal question' as central to contemporary concerns across a wide range of disciplinesBrings discourses from the sciences into dialogue with the arts and humanitiesOpens up new methods, alignments, directions and challenges for the future of animal studiesAfterword from Cary Wolfe (Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English, Rice University)

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud - the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel - led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them. For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, her book offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis.

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS PLACING THE HUMAN-WOLF RELATIONSHIP IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEInternational in range and chronological in organisation, this volume aims to grasp the maincurrents of thought about interactions with the wolf in modern history. It focuses on perceptions, interactions and dependencies, and includes cultural and social analyses as well as biological aspects. Wolves have been feared and admired, hunted and cared for. At the same historical moment, different cultural and social groups have upheld widely diverging ideas about the wolf. Fundamental dichotomies in modern history, between nature and culture, wilderness and civilisation and danger and security, have been portrayed in terms of wolf-human relationships. The wolf has been part of aesthetic, economic, political, psychological and cultural reasoning albeit it is nowadays mainly addressed as an object of wildlife management. There has been a major shift in perception from dangerous predator to endangered species, but the big bad fairytale wolf remains a cultural icon. This volume roots study of human-wolf relationships coherently within the disciplines of environmental and animal history for the first time.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1906 Edition.

The true story of a loveable rescue donkey who becomes a hero, perfect for animal lovers everywhere. Tracy Garton had run the Radcliffe Donkey Sanctuary for twenty years, creating a safe haven for more than sixty sick, unwanted and mistreated donkeys. But after a devastatingly difficult winter, with sky high bills, she didn't know if she could afford to carry on - or if she had the physical strength to keep going. Then, in the first week of January, the phone rang. A donkey had been abandoned 130 miles away. Rushing to his rescue Tracy found Alan - forlorn, balding and shivering - tethered up tightly in a supermarket car park. Barely able to walk on his painfully overgrown hooves, he had been left to die. Tracy ran her hands gently over Alan's protruding ribs, and whispered in his ear: 'Don't worry boy, I won't give up on you.' Over the next twelve months, as Tracy grappled with attacks from vandals and perilous flash floods and desperately tried to raise money, Alan gradually recovered - turning into a loveable rogue. As Christmas rolled around, Tracy was too worried about the future to enjoy the festive season. She had no idea that the shy skinny animal she'd rescued was going to give her the greatest gift of all . . . Alan The Christmas Donkey is a funny, warm and inspiring read.

'Born to Fly' is a poignant and heart warming story based on true-life adventures of captive birds being safely released back into nature...blended with a fictional story about a Rainbow Lorikeet named Cherub. It is predominantly a book for all ages, for storytelling and learning is universal. 'Born to Fly' is also a metaphor for us all - to free ourselves to live happy, fulfilling and creative lives...and as we do this we automatically assist others to do the same. It is this inherent wisdom that Cherub and her friends are lovingly and patiently teaching us. As caretakers and guardians of the natural world, our role is to observe and delight in the many wondrous miracles and beauty of nature. It is also to teach each and every one of our children this precious gift, so we can all truly fly free.