New Books in Animal Studies
Episodes
M. Chaiklin and P. Gooding, "Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020), edited by Martha Chaiklin, Philip Gooding, and Gwyn Campbell, examines...
Louise M. Pryke, "Turtle" (Reaction Books, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As ancient creatures that once shared the Earth with dinosaurs, turtles have played a crucial role in maintaining healthy terrestrial and marine ecosy...
Colleen Plumb, "Thirty Times a Minute" (Radius Books, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Captive elephants exhibit what biologists refer to as stereotypy, which includes rhythmic rocking, head bobbing, stepping back and forth, and pacing. ...
Rosemary-Claire Collard, "Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade" (Duke UP, 2020)
27 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Parrots and snakes, wild cats and monkeys---exotic pets can now be found everywhere from skyscraper apartments and fenced suburban backyards to roadsi...
Jim Mason, "An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature" (Latern Books, 2002)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
First published by Simon & Schuster in 1993 and then by Continuum in 1998, Jim Mason’s An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature ...
Marisa Anne Bass, "Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt" (Princeton UP, 2019)
17 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton UP, 2019) Marissa Anne Bass explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dut...
Katja M. Guenther, "The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals" (Stanford UP, 2020)
13 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Monster is an adult pit bull, muscular and grey, who is impounded in a large animal shelter in Los Angeles. Like many other dogs at the shelter, Monst...
Filling the Gaps in Animal Ethics: What Has Been Neglected and What Can Be Done
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sociocognitive abilities of animals have been studied over the past few decades, but there is still a huge gap in research looking at animal ethics. W...
M. Bekoff and J. Pierce, "The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age" (Beacon Press, 2017)
03 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A compelling argument that the time has come to use what we know about the fascinating and diverse inner lives of other animals on their behalf. Every...
I. Newkirk and G. Stone, "Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life and offer tools for living mor...
Gregory Forth, "A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in an Eastern Indonesian Society" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gregory Forth, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has studied the Nage people ...
Ernest Freeberg, "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement" (Basic Books, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial ci...
Morality in Nature: What Honeybees and Flowers Can Tell Us about its Origin
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is morality solely a human creation? Or can we find evidence of morality in other parts of nature? Honeybees and flowers have co-evolved to form a mut...
Frans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" (Norton, 2019)
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (W. W. Norton & Company) is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional li...
Carl Safina, "Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace" (Henry Holt, 2020)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Some people insist that culture is strictly a human accomplishment. What are those people afraid of? Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Familie...
Jessica Pierce, "Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets" (U Chicago Press, 2016)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them wit...
Rachel Mundy, "Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening" (Wesleyan UP, 2018)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“What makes song sparrows, Verdi, medieval monks, and minstrelsy part of the same taxonomy?” So asks—and answers—Rachel Mundy, who is Assistan...
Justice to Man’s Best Friend: The Ethics of Commercial Dog Breeding
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Selective breeding of dogs currently helps meet the high demand for purebred dogs, but there are concerns about the ethicality of this practice. In th...
Peter Carruthers, "Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest" (Oxford UP, 2019)
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Do nonhuman animals have phenomenally conscious mental states? For example, do they have the types of conscious experiences we have when, in our case,...
Timothy Barnard, "Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942" (NUS Press, 2019)
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Imperial Creature: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (National University of Singapore Press, 2019), Timothy Barnard explor...
Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the h...
Mark Alizart, "Dogs" (Polity, 2019)
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Man’s best friend, domesticated since prehistoric times, a travelling companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy curle...
Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019)
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how...
Geoffrey Barstow, "Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet" (Columbia UP, 2018)
01 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tibetan Buddhism teaches compassion toward all beings, a category that explicitly includes animals. Slaughtering animals is morally problematic at bes...
T. J. Kasperbauer, "Subhuman: The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes Towards Animals" (Oxford UP, 2018)
10 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Non-human animals are companions, research subjects, creatures we fear, creatures we eat. Why do we put other animals in the various categories we do,...
Radhika Govindrajan, "Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In what is sure to become a classic, Radhika Govindrajan’s Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (University of...
Peter Sahlins, “1668: The Year of the Animal in France” (Zone Books, 2017)
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture ...
Frederick L. Brown, “The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle” (U Washington Press, 2016)
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Not all city dwellers are bipedal, according to Frederick L. Brown, author of The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (University of...
Monica Mattfeld, “Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship” (Penn State UP, 2017)
19 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Monica Mattfeld’s Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (Penn State University Press, 2017) explores the complex...
Kathleen McAuliffe, “This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society” (Mariner Books, 2017)
21 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the...
John Hadley, “Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals” (Lexington Books, 2015)
09 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing ha...
Marta Zaraska, “Meathooked: The History and Science of our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat” (Basic Books, 2016)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Here in the U.S. we’ve just celebrated the Fourth of July, with its parades, fireworks, and, of course, cook-outs. If you’re like me, the smell of...
David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015)
20 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociolo...
Anita Guerrini, “The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
04 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anita Guerrini‘s wonderful new book explores Paris as a site of anatomy, dissection, and science during the reign of Louis XIV between 1643-1715. Th...
Federico Marcon, “The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan” (U of Chicago, 2015)
22 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature...
Leslie Irvine, “My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and their Animals” (Lynne Rienner, 2013)
11 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Homelessness and stigma go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more apparent than pet ownership among the homeless. From nasty looks to outright insult...
Ian Jared Miller, “The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo” (University of California Press, 2013)
10 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature...
Sarra Tlilli, “Animals in the Qur’an” (Cambridge UP, 2012)
17 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In her book Animals in the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Sarra Tlili carefully addresses a complex issue. What does the Qur’an say...
Barbara R. Ambros, “Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan” (University of Hawai’i Press, 2012)
30 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
It opens with a parakeet named Homer, and it closes with a dog named Hachiko. In the intervening pages, Barbara Ambros explores the deaths, afterlives...
Joyce Salisbury, “The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages” (Routledge, 2011)
21 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I have three cats. They have names (Fatty, Mini, and Koshka). They live in my house. I feed them, take them to the vet, and love them. When they die, ...