Full Description
An elucidating collection of ten original essays, Making Animal Meaning reconceptualizes methods for researching animal histories and rethinks the contingency of the human-animal relationship. The vibrant and diverse field of animal studies is detailed in these interdisciplinary discussions, which include voices from a broad range of scholars and have an extensive chronological and geographical reach. These exciting discourses capture the most compelling theoretical underpinnings of animal significance while exploring meaning-making through the study of specific spaces, species, and human-animal relations. A deeply thoughtful collection — vital to understanding central questions of agency, kinship, and animal consumption — these essays tackle the history and philosophy of constructing animal meaning.
Contents
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Making New Animal Meanings
Animal Writes: Historiography, Disciplinarity, and the Animal Trace
Mobility and the Making of Animal Meaning: The Kinetics of "Vermin" and "Wildlife" in Southern Africa
Cannibalism, Consumption, and Kinship in Animal Studies
Part 2: Applying New Animal Meanings
The Renaissance Transformation of Animal Meaning: From Petrarch to Montaigne
On the Trail of the Devil Cat: Hunting for the Jaguar in the United States and Mexico
Animal Deaths and the Written Record of History: The Politics of Pet Obituaries
Golden Retrievers Are White, Pit Bulls Are Black, and Chihuahuas Are Hispanic: Representations of Breeds of Dog and Issues of Race in Popular Culture
Interspecies Families, Freelance Dogs, and Personhood: Saved Lives and Being One at an Assistance Dog Agency
Animal Meaning in T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Animals at the End of the World: Notes toward a Transspecies Eschatology
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
