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There are complex & often surprising connections between our imagining of animals & our cultural environment. Topics discussed in this collection include fox hunting, pet cloning, animatronic characters & how we displace our fear of aging onto our dogs.
To modern sensibilities, nineteenth-century zoos often seem to be unnatural places where animals led miserable lives in cramped, wrought-iron cages. Today zoo animals, in at least the better zoos, wander in open spaces that resemble natural habitats and are enclosed, not by bars, but by moats, cliffs, and other landscape features. In Savages and Beasts, Nigel Rothfels traces the origins of the modern zoo to the efforts of the German animal entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck. By the late nineteenth century, Hagenbeck had emerged as the world's undisputed leader in the capture and transport of exotic animals. His business included procuring and exhibiting indigenous peoples in highly profitable spect...
Why have elephants—and our preconceptions about them—been central to so much of human thought? From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal ...
Encounters between the species in an anthology of lively solo performances and commentary
Gorgeous Beasts takes a fresh look at the place of animals in history and art. Refusing the traditional subordination of animals to humans, the essays gathered here examine a rich variety of ways animals contribute to culture: as living things, as scientific specimens, as food, weapons, tropes, and occasions for thought and creativity. History and culture set the terms for this inquiry. As history changes, so do the ways animals participate in culture. Gorgeous Beasts offers a series of discontinuous but probing studies of the forms their participation takes. This collection presents the work of a wide range of scholars, critics, and thinkers from diverse disciplines: philosophy, literature,...
Captures the very essence of the problem of zoos. Proceeds from this work will go to the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education, and Conservation.
Established in 1836, the Bristol Zoo is the world’s oldest surviving zoo outside of a capital city and has frequently been at the vanguard of zoo innovation. In The Wild Within, Andrew Flack uses the experiences of the Bristol Zoo to explore the complex and ever-changing relationship between human and beast, which in many cases has altered radically over time. Flack recounts a history in which categories and identities combined, converged, and came into conflict, as the animals at Bristol proved to be extremely adaptive. He also reveals aspects of the human-animal bond, however, that have remained remarkably consistent not only throughout the zoo’s existence but for centuries, including ...
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In the first English-language history of the Berlin zoo, Gary Bruce traces the fascinating story of one of Germany's most popular cultural institutions, from its 19th century displays of "exotic" peoples to Nazi attempts to breed back long-extinct European cattle. As an institution with broad public reach, the zoo for more than 150 years shaped German views not only of the animal world, but of the human world far beyond Germany's borders.
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