Considering Animals

Edited by Carol Freeman, Elizabeth Leane and Yvette Watt Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations offers cutting-edge research, a contemporary focus, and a pioneering multidisciplinary perspective on nonhuman animals. Fifteen researchers from U.K., U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa contribute to a collection that draws on areas as diverse as art, media, law, literature, science, film and cultural theory to investigate how we treat, represent and relate to animals. Given the current widespread extinction of species, environmental destruction and global warming, this is an important and timely collection.

Contributors
Tim Low – When is Nature Not?
Jonathan Balcombe – Pleasure’s Moral Worth
Helen Tiffin – The Speech of Dumb Beasts
Steve Baker – Contemporary Art and Animal Rights
Jed Mayer – The Nature of the Experimental Animal: Evolution, Vivisection and the Victorian Environment
Carol Freeman – Extinction, Representation, Agency: The Case of the Dodo
Philip Armstrong – Cetaceans and Sentiment
Elizabeth Leane and Stephanie Pfennigwerth – Marching on Thin Ice: The Politics of Penguin Films
Undine Sellbach – The Traumatic Effort to Understand: Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man
Wendy Woodward – Naming and the Unspeakable: Representations of Animal Deaths in Some recent South African Print Media
Marsha L. Baum – “Room on the Ark?”: The Symbolic Nature of U.S. Pet Evacuation Statutes for Nonhuman Animals
Lucy Davis – Zones of Contagion: The Singapore Body Politic & the Body of the Street-cat
Kay Milton – Possum Magic, Possum Menace: Wildlife Control and the Demonization of Cuteness
Yvette Watt – Making Animals Matter: Why the Art World Needs to Rethink the Representation of Animals

Foreword by Marc Bekoff

“Examining a remarkable range of human-animal relations – from extinctions and historical dolphin encounters to suburban wildlife control, marching penguins, devouring grizzlies, pests, plagues, and pets – the authors in this collection ask us to (re)consider what we think we know about animals, what we do based on that knowledge, and what, finally, animals think of us.This collection provides compelling evidence of the vitality and urgency of the field, while it forces us to ask neglected questions about our disciplines and practices” Nigel Rothfels, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

“Considering Animals lines up fresh and passionate writing from prominent scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars exploring our historical and contemporary relationships with other animals. Sharp, provocative and insightful, this energetic volume is essential reading for those new to and established in the field of Human-Animal Studies” Annie Potts, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies