Animals and agency : an interdisciplinary exploration / edited by Sarah E. McFarland and Ryan Hediger.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McFarland, Sarah E., editor.

Hediger, Ryan, editor.

Series:

Human-animal studies ; v. 8.

Human animal studies, 1573-4226 ; v. 8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animal welfare.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (392 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

While many scholars who write about animals deal with animal agency in some way, this volume is the first to position the question of nonhuman agency as the primary focus of inquiry. Section I presents studies of actual animals demonstrating agency; Section II moves agency into new terrain while considering key representations of animal agency in literature; Section III analyzes animals as mediators and as conveyances of human-to-human communication;and Section IV investigates the agency of beings who defy conventional species categories. The Envoi demonstrates how the microscopic polyp is interwoven into notions of agency and mythical superagency. This volume's interdisciplinary explorations press hard on issues of agency to open up space for more questions about how we can understand relationships between the human and the nonhuman.

Contents:

Approaching the agency of other animals : an introduction / Sarah E. McFarland and Ryan Hediger

Animals as agents

Whale agency : affordances and acts of resistance in captive environments / Traci Warkentin

The racehorse as protagonist : agency, independence, and improvisation / Shelly R. Scott

Consuming Timothy Treadwell : redefining nonhuman agency in light of Herzog's Grizzly man / David Lulka

Dancing penguins and a pretentious raccoon : animated animals and 21st century environmentalism / Sarah E. McFarland

Speaking through animals

No human hand : the ourang-outang in Poe's "The murders in the Rue Morgue" / Stephanie Rowe

Sled dogs of the American North : on masculinity, whiteness, and human freedom / Rebecca Onion

The slave whisperer rides the frontier : horseface minstrelsy in the western / J.J. Clark

Speaking for animals

Representing the experimental animal : competing voices in victorian culture / Jed Mayer

Forms of life : the search for the simian self in ape language experiments / Rebecca Bishop

Animals, agency, and absence : a discourse analysis of institutional animal care and use committee meetings / Debra Durham and Debra Merskin

Humanimals and other marginal species

"To abandon the colonial animal" : "race," animals, and the feral child in Kipling's Mowgli stories / Dipika Nath

At the top of the hierarchical ladder : were-animals in Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and chocolate and Patrice Kindl's Owl in love / Cat Yampell

The microgeography of infestation in relationship spaces / Matthew Candelaria

Crossing over : (dis)ability, contingent agency, and death in the marginal genre work of Temple Grandin and Jim Harrison / Ryan Hediger

Envoi towards a philosophy of the polyp / Laurence Simmons.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-40130-0

9786612401305

90-474-2924-9

OCLC:

570508886

Publisher Number:

10.1163/ej.9789004175808.i-382 DOI