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This book addresses the problem of ‘animal life’ in terms that go beyond the usual extension of liberal rights to animals. The discourse of animal rights is one that increasingly occupies the political, ethical and intellectual terrain of modern society. But, although the question of the status of animals holds an important place within a range of civil, political and technological disciplines, the issue of rights in relation to animals usually rehearses the familiar perspectives of legal, moral and humanist philosophy. ‘Animal law’ is fast becoming a topic of significant contemporary interest and discussion. This burgeoning interest has not, however, been matched by renewed inquiry ...
Explores the history and psychology of the fear of insects.
Love in a Time of Slaughters examines a diverse array of contemporary creative narratives in which genocide and extinction blur species lines in order to show how such stories can promote the preservation of biological and cultural diversity in a time of man-made threats to species survival. From indigenous novels and Japanese anime to art installations and truth commission reports, Susan McHugh analyzes source material from a variety of regions and cultures to highlight cases where traditional knowledge works in tandem with modern ways of thinking about human-animal relations. In contrast to success stories of such relationships, the narratives McHugh highlights show the vulnerabilities of ...
This text contributes to the growing field of human-animal studies by examining the human impulse evidenced inblogs, social networking sites, video games, comic books, and animal welfare literature to ventriloquize the animal voice.
In Shark, Dean Crawford explores the long relationship between shark and man, revealing that behind the fearsome caricature is a complex animal that deserves a thoughtful reconsideration.
An entertaining and wide-ranging romp through the cultural history of a peculiar bird. The cuckoo is peculiar for inspiring such divergent ideas: a symbol of foolishness to both Aristophanes and Cocoa Puffs, a reliable harbinger of spring and the hours of a cuckoo clock, and the source of innumerable innuendos inspired by a habit of laying eggs in others’ nests. In this short, entertaining book, Cynthia Chris explores both the natural and cultural history of the cuckoo as well as the many stories told throughout the centuries about this fascinating bird.
Put simply, refraction describes a change in the direction of light or sound due to a change in the medium the light or sound goes through. Writing a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis means changing the direction of light shed on a particular text or topic, as the theses collected in this volume conclusively show: A dystopian novel is shown to hinge on questions of animal rights; a complex novelistic structure is revealed to have its origins in scientific discourses; a clearly Gothic novel has its foundation in aesthetic Christianity, to outline just some of the topics. All these papers have in common that they take a well-known text or idea and change the angle through which it is read and analysed – and suddenly a rainbow of new insights is created.
Exploring the ethical questions posed by, in, and about children’s literature, this collection examines the way texts intended for children raise questions of value, depict the moral development of their characters, and call into attention shared moral presuppositions. The essays in Part I look at various past attempts at conveying moral messages to children and interrogate their underlying assumptions. What visions of childhood were conveyed by explicit attempts to cultivate specific virtues in children? What unstated cultural assumptions were expressed by growing resistance to didacticism? How should we prepare children to respond to racism in their books and in their society? Part II ta...
"The present volume gathers new essays in ecofeminist literary criticism and theory that extend this critical trajectory for ecocriticism in the context of social eco-feminist theory and practice."--BOOK JACKET.
A compendium of 1,001 facts about food, human behavior, health, drug use, the weather, animals, and more.