This book draws attention to the logical contradictions, unstable premises, and unquestioned assumptions that underlie arguments about Man's distinction, while also demonstrating that the way we think about nonhuman animals is only one possibility among many. Vestiges of older ways of thinking continue to inform our understanding of the human-nonhuman animal relationship, disturbing the simple narrative that Man has mastered nature. The reader will additionally find here a history that illuminates popular attitudes toward nature as well as intellectual traditions about the relationship between Man and other animals. As a result, each chapter is an overview of how the past continues to inform the present. The chapters, then, move back and forth between ancient ideas like the myths of Prometheus and Orpheus, Age of Reason philosophers like Francis Bacon and Immanuel Kant and modern practices like petkeeping and vivisection.

Bringing together the expertise of rhetoricians in English and communication as well as media studies scholars, Arguments about Animal Ethics delves into the rhetorical and discursive practices of participants in controversies over the use of nonhuman animals for meat, entertainment, fur, and vivisection. Both sides of the debate are carefully analyzed, as the contributors examine how stakeholders persuade or fail to persuade audiences about the ethics of animal rights or the value of using animals. The essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics, such as the campaigns waged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (including the sexy vegetarian and nude campaigns), greyhound activists, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, food manufacturers, and the biomedical research industry, as well as communication across the human-nonhuman animal boundary and the failure of the animal rights movement to protest research into genetically modifying living beings. Arguments about Animal Ethics' insightful analysis of the animal rights movement will appeal to communication scholars, as well as those interested in social change.

Bringing together the expertise of rhetoricians in English and communication as well as media studies scholars, Arguments about Animal Ethics delves into the rhetorical and discursive practices of participants in controversies over the use of nonhuman animals for meat, entertainment, fur, and vivisection. Both sides of the debate are carefully analyzed, as the contributors examine how stakeholders persuade or fail to persuade audiences about the ethics of animal rights or the value of using animals. The essays in this volume cover a wide range of topics, such as the campaigns waged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (including the sexy vegetarian and nude campaigns), greyhound activists, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, food manufacturers, and the biomedical research industry, as well as communication across the human-nonhuman animal boundary and the failure of the animal rights movement to protest research into genetically modifying living beings. Arguments about Animal Ethics' insightful analysis of the animal rights movement will appeal to communication scholars, as well as those interested in social change.

"Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age" critically analyzes a range of sounds on vocal and musical recordings, on the radio, in film, and in cartoons to show how sounds are used to persuade in subtle ways. Greg Goodale explains how and to what effect sounds can be "read" like an aural text, demonstrating this method by examining important audio cues such as dialect, pausing, and accent in presidential recordings at the turn of the twentieth century. Goodale also shows how clocks, locomotives, and machinery are utilized in film and literature to represent frustration and anxiety about modernity, and how race and other forms of identity came to be represented by sound during the interwar period. In highlighting common sounds of industry and war in popular media, "Sonic Persuasion" also demonstrates how programming producers and governmental agencies employed sound to evoke a sense of fear in listeners. Goodale provides important links to other senses, especially the visual, to give fuller meaning to interpretations of identity, culture, and history in sound.