Do both the zoo and the mental hospital induce psychosis, as humans are treated as animals and animals are treated as humans? How have we looked at animals in the past, and how do we look at them today? How have zoos presented themselves, and their purpose, over time? In response to the emergence of environmental and animal studies, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theorists, literature scholars, and historians around the world have begun to explore the significance of zoological parks, past and present. Zoo Studies considers the modern zoo from a range of approaches and disciplines, united in a desire to blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. The volume begins with an account of the first modern mental hospital, La Salpetriere, established in 1656, and the first panoptical zoo, the menagerie at Versailles, created in 1662 by the same royal architect; the final chapter presents a choreographic performance that imagines the Toronto Zoo as a place where the human body can be inspired by animal bodies. From beginning to end, through interdisciplinary collaboration, this volume decentres the human subject and offers alternative ways of thinking about zoos and their inhabitants. This collection immerses readers in the lives of animals and their experiences of captivity and asks us to reflect on our own assumptions about both humans and animals. An original and groundbreaking work, Zoo Studies will change the way readers see nonhuman animals and themselves.

Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.

Weaving together a diverse range of scholarly-activist intersectional voices from around the world, Critical Animal Studies and Activism: International Perspectives on Total Liberation and Intersectionality co-edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Richard J. White makes a powerful contribution to knowledge and understanding. It is essential reading for environmentalists, animal advocates, social justice organizers, policy-makers, social change-makers, and indeed for all those who care about the future of this planet. This book spans many scholar disciplines and activist social movements, and provides new insights to fundamental debates surrounding inter-species justice, liberation, and democracy. This critical theory for total liberation book expands the understanding of one struggle one fight: for human freedom, for animal rights, and for the liberation of the earth herself. Rooted in a radical praxis, the book argues that those in academia that claim critical animal studies, need to hit the streets with the protesters and the protesters need to join the theoretical conversations. Theory and practice and not binaries, but two pieces of a larger goal. Read this book and use its arguments to take the fight to smash capitalism, oppression, and domination in all its forms!

Animal studies and biopolitics are two of the most dynamic areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, but until now, they have had little to say to each other. Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in "Before the Law", Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics. Wolfe argues that the human-animal distinction must be supplemented with the central distinction of biopolitics: the difference between those animals that are members of a community and those that are deemed killable but not murderable. From this understanding, we can begin to make sense of the fact that this distinction prevails within both the human and animal domains and address such difficult issues as why we afford some animals unprecedented levels of care and recognition while subjecting others to unparalleled forms of brutality and exploitation. Engaging with many major figures in biopolitical thought - from Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault to Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Derrida - Wolfe explores how biopolitics can help us understand both the ethical and political dimensions of the current questions surrounding the rights of animals.

No creature has been subject to such extremes of reverence and exploitation as the chicken. Hens have been venerated as cosmic creators and roosters as solar divinities. Many cultures have found the mysteries of birth, healing, death and resurrection encapsulated in the hen's egg. Yet today, most of us have nothing to do with chickens as living beings, although billions are consumed around the world every year. In "Chicken" Annie Potts introduces us to the vivid and astonishing world of Gallus gallus. The book traces the evolution of jungle fowl and the domestication of chickens by humans. It describes the ways in which chickens experience the world, form families and friendships, communicate with each other, play, bond, and grieve. "Chicken" explores cultural practices like egg-rolling, the cockfight, alectromancy, wishbone-pulling and the chicken-swinging ritual of Kapparot; discovers depictions of chickenhood in ancient and modern art, literature and film; and also showcases bizarre supernatural chickens from around the world including the Basilisk, Kikimora and Pollio Maligno. "Chicken "concludes with a detailed analysis of the place of chickens in the world today, and a tribute to those who educate and advocate on behalf of these birds. Numerous beautiful illustrations show the many faces (and feathers and combs and tails) of Gallus, from wild roosters in the jungles of Southeast Asia to quirky Naked-Necks and majestic Malays. There are chickens painted by Chagall and Magritte, chickens made of hair-rollers, and chickens shaped like mountains. The reader of "Chicken "will encounter a multitude of intriguing facts and ideas, including why the largest predator ever to walk the earth is considered the ancestor of the modern chicken, how mother hens communicate with their chicks while they're still in the egg, why Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece required him to play a chicken, whether it's safe to take eggs on a sea-voyage, and how "chicken therapy" can rejuvenate us all. This book will fascinate those already familiar with and devoted to the Gallus species, and it will open up a whole new gallinaceous world for future admirers of the intelligent and passionate chicken.

ANIMAL DREAMS collects David Brooks' thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian and international literature and culture, from 'The Man from Snowy River' to Rainer Maria Rilke and The Turin Horse, to live-animal exports, veganism, and the culling of native and non-native species. In his piercing, elegant, widely celebrated style, he considers how private and public conversations about animals reflect older and deeper attitudes to our own and other species, and what questions we must ask to move these conversations forward, in what he calls 'the immense work of undoing'. For readers interested in animal welfare, conservation, and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams will be an essential, richly rewarding companion. Praise for David Brooks: "one of Australia's most skilled, unusual and versatile writers" -- Peter Pierce, The Sydney Morning Herald. "No one writes about animals like David Brooks." -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (author of The Assault on Truth, When Elephants Weep and Lost Companions). Praise for ANIMAL DREAMS: "Beautifully written and emotionally and intellectually enthralling. The best book I have ever read on relations between humans and animals and the 'redress' we owe them. It makes you angry, it makes you weep; it makes you determined to rethink and to act." -- Helen Tiffin, FAHA (co-author of The Empire Writes Back and Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutang).

"A provocative sociological account of human relations with non-human animals, providing an innovative theorization of the social relations of species in terms of complex systemic relations of domination, looking at ways other animals are constitutive of human social lives at the dinner table, as livestock and as companions in our homes"--

Green Chimneys is a nationally renowned US nonprofit organization that helps improve the lives of at-risk urban children by incorporating animals and environmental activities into their educational experiences. Founded by Dr. Samuel (Rollo) B. Ross, Jr., Green Chimneys Farm for Little Folk opened its doors in 1948 with just eleven students. The property has since expanded to cover nearly seven hundred fifty acres in New York, and the school now serves almost two hundred students. Recognized as a worldwide leader in animal-assisted therapy and activities, Green Chimneys provides innovative and caring services for children and their families, as well as the animals with which they spend time. It targets its services at restoring emotional well-being and fostering independence. For over sixty years, Ross developed and operated this innovative and experimental year-round school, and he still remains integrally involved. This book recounts his experiences, sharing a lifetime of practical learning and insights to benefit and inspire all those who work with troubled children, and who believe in the healing power of the natural world.

Back in the 1940s, the practice referred to as Opound seizureO became a common practice in taxpayer-funded animal shelters across the country. Whether for cosmetic testing, human or animal drug testing, medical technique and tool testing, or biochemical testing, these once-family pets are subjected to experimentation that often ends in death. While many states fail to keep accurate data, the number of pets that become victims of pound seizure easily reaches the thousands and though most citizens are unaware of the practice, it may very well be happening at their local animal shelter. Pound seizure remains a dirty little secret in American society, but the practice is moving toward extinction with the help of local citizens advocating for change at their shelter, as well as animal rescue and welfare organizations providing assistance and advocacy. Learning more about the practice, as well as alternatives, will help give readers a fuller picture of whatOs happening in American animal shelters and what they can do to stem the tide of dealers and brokers sweeping off animals to their almost-certain demise.

Throughout the 19th century, animals were integrated into staged scenarios of confrontation, ranging from lion acts in small cages to large-scale re-enactments of war. Initially presenting a handful of exotic animals, travelling menageries grew to contain multiple species in their thousands. These 19th-century menageries entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit nature through war-like practices against other animal species. Animal shows became a stimulus for antisocial behaviour as locals taunted animals, caused fights, and even turned into violent mobs. Human societal problems were difficult to separate from issues of cruelty to animals. Apart from reflecting human capacity for fighting and aggression, and the belief in human dominance over nature, these animal performances also echoed cultural fascination with conflict, war and colonial expansion, as the grand spectacles of imperial power reinforced state authority and enhanced public displays of nationhood and nationalistic evocations of colonial empires. Fighting Nature is an insightful analysis of the historical legacy of 19th-century colonialism, war, animal acquisition and transportation. This legacy of entrenched beliefs about the human right to exploit other animal species is yet to be defeated.'When does fighting end and theatre begin? In this fascinating study, Peta Tait - one of the most prominent authors in the Performance/Animal Studies intersection - explores animal acts with a particular focus on confrontation. The sites of the human-animal encounter range from theatres, circus, and war re-enactments investigating how the development of certain human fighting practices run in parallel with certain types of public exhibits of wild animals. Tait's account is historical, looking at animal acts - from touring menageries to theatrical performances - from the 1820s to the 1910s.'Lourdes Orozco, Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Leeds

Why our failure to consider the power of animals is to our deep detriment Animals are staging a revolution-they're just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, this book threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty, informative, and captivating work-at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies-Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society Investment Science Book Prize 'Endlessly fascinating.' - Bill Bryson 'Eye-opening, informative and very funny!' - Chris Packham 'Well-informed and downright funny' - Richard Dawkins History is full of strange animal stories invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney. But when it comes to understanding animals, we've got a long way to go. Whether we're watching a viral video of romping baby pandas or looking at a picture of penguins 'holding hands', we often project our own values - innocence, abstinence, hard work - onto animals. So you've probably never considered that moose get drunk and that penguins are notorious cheats. In The Unexpected Truth About Animals Zoologist Lucy unravels many such myths - that eels are born from sand, that swallows hibernate under water, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that are licked into shape by their mothers - to show that the stories we create reveal as much about us as they do about the animals. Astonishing, illuminating and laugh-out-loud funny.

The bestselling author of Dog Sense and Cat Sense explains why living with animals has always been a fundamental aspect of being human In this highly original and hugely enjoyable work, John Bradshaw examines modern humans' often contradictory relationship with the animal world. Why, despite the apparent irrationality of keeping pets, do half of today's American households, and almost that figure in the UK, have at least one pet (triple the rate of the 1970s)? Then again, why do we care for some animals in our homes, and designate others only as a source of food? Through these and many other questions, one of the world's foremost anthrozoology experts shows that our relationship with animals is nothing less than an intrinsic part of human nature. An affinity for animals drove our evolution and now, without animals around us, we risk losing an essential part of ourselves.

The historical horse is at once material and abstract, as is the notion of the border. Borders and frontiers are not only markers delineating geographical spaces but also mental constructs: there are borders between order and disorder, between what is permitted and what is prohibited. Boundaries and liminal spaces also exist in the material, economic, political, moral, legal and religious spheres. In this volume, the contributing authors explore the theme of the liminality of the horse in all of these historical arenas, asking how one reconciles the very different roles played by the horse in human history.

Humans and nonhuman animals engage with each other in a multitude of fascinating ways. They have always done so, motivated by both necessity and choice. Yet, as human population numbers increase and our impact on the planet expands, this engagement takes on new meanings and requires new understanding.In Engaging with Animals: Interpretations of a Shared Existence experts in the field of human-animal studies investigate, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the ways in which humans and other animals interact. Grouped into three broad sections, the chapters focus on themes ranging from attitudes, ethics and interactions to history, art and literature, and finally animal welfare outcomes. While offering different interpretations of human-non-human interactions, they share a common goal in attempting to find pathways leading to a mutually beneficial and shared co-existence.

What's the difference between owning a painting, a dog, or a young child? For starters, you can't own a child, but you are legally responsible for their care. You can own a painting and a dog; both fall under the jurisdiction of the law and in particular, property rights. But why should a dog, man's best friend, an animal with a mind and emotions, fall under the same general category as a painting? Juxtaposed in this way, the question seems silly. How could the law be so foolish? Can't lawyers see the difference? Why shouldn't dogs end up in the same category as young children, a category of living things that require our care? If the law recognized dogs, along with cats, cows, mice, monkeys, birds, and files as requiring legal guardianship, this would have radical consequences for how we live our lives. We couldn't keep animals in zoos, couldn't eat them, use their fur to keep warm, or test them with drugs to improve our own health. Their lives would be different, and so would ours. This book explores these issues, but does so in a fresh new way. combination of voices from different experts, we present a set of essays from a lawyer philosopher, biochemist, psychologist, and animal scientist, together with a group of educated students engaged in the debate. The essays are set up to present both sides, some adopting arguments in favor of a shift to legal guardianship, while others support their status as property. Experts in the field will be engaged by the subtle issues surrounding this debate, while educators will find the student essays refreshing and of interest in classroom seminars.