Zoo renewal : white flight and the animal ghetto / Lisa Uddin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Uddin, Lisa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

San Diego Zoo.

National Zoological Park (U.S.).

Zoos--Design and construction.

Zoos.

Zoo animals--Symbolic aspects.

Zoo animals.

Zoos--Symbolic aspects.

National Zoological Park (U.S.)--History.

San Diego Zoo--History.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 277 pages : illustrations (some colors) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Summary:

Why do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic enclosures. She argues that reform belongs to the story of cities and feelings toward many of their human inhabitants. In Zoo Renewal, Uddin demonstrates how efforts to make the zoo more natural and a haven for particular species reflected white fears about the American -, pointedly, how the shame many visitors felt in observing confined animals drew on broader anxieties about race and urban life. Examining the campaign against cages, renovations at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the San Diego Zoo, and the cases of a rare female white Bengal tiger and a collection of southern white rhinoceroses. Uddin unpacks episodes that challenge assumptions that zoos are about other worlds and other creatures and expand the history of U.S. urbanism. Uddin shows how the drive to protect endangered species and to ensure larger, safer zoos was shaped by struggles over urban decay, suburban growth, and the dilemmas of postwar American whiteness. Zoo Renewal ultimately reveals how feeling bad, or good, at the zoo is connected to our feelings about American cities and their residents. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : On feeling bad at the zoo

Shame and the naked cage

Zoo slum clearance in Washington, D.C.

Mohini's bodies

White open spaces in San Diego County

Looking endangered

Afterword: Good feelings in Seattle.

Notes:

"A Quadrant Book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-267) and index.

ISBN:

9780816679119

0816679118

9780816679126

0816679126

OCLC:

905419130