Zoo studies : a new humanities / edited by Tracy McDonald and Daniel Vandersommers.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McDonald, Tracy, 1966- editor.

Vandersommers, Daniel, 1984- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Zoos--Philosophy.

Zoos.

Zoos--Social aspects.

Zoos--Moral and ethical aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (361 pages)

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Do both the zoo and the mental hospital induce psychosis, as humans are treated as animals and animals are treated as humans? How have we looked at animals in the past, and how do we look at them today? How have zoos presented themselves, and their purpose, over time? In response to the emergence of environmental and animal studies, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, theorists, literature scholars, and historians around the world have begun to explore the significance of zoological parks, past and present. Zoo Studies considers the modern zoo from a range of approaches and disciplines, united in a desire to blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. The volume begins with an account of the first modern mental hospital, La Salpêtrière, established in 1656, and the first panoptical zoo, the menagerie at Versailles, created in 1662 by the same royal architect; the final chapter presents a choreographic performance that imagines the Toronto Zoo as a place where the human body can be inspired by animal bodies. From beginning to end, through interdisciplinary collaboration, this volume decentres the human subject and offers alternative ways of thinking about zoos and their inhabitants. This collection immerses readers in the lives of animals and their experiences of captivity and asks us to reflect on our own assumptions about both humans and animals. An original and groundbreaking work, Zoo Studies will change the way readers see nonhuman animals and themselves."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Towards a New Humanities

Psychotic Humans, Psychotic Animals: The Zoo and the Mental Hospital, 1656–1794

The Antelope Collectors

Failed Zoo Experiments: Primatology, Aeronautics, and the Animality of “Modern” Science, 1891–1903

Sculpting Dinah with the Blunt Tools of the Historian

Stereoscopic Animals: Spectatorship, Kodiak Bears, and the Keystone Animal Set

“Try Telling That to the Polar Bears”: Rationing and Resistance at the Wartime Zoo

Gust (ca 1952–1988), or a History from Below of the Changing Zoo

Child Stars at the Zoo: The Rise and Fall of Polar Bear Knut

Pandas and the Reproduction of Race and Heterosexuality in the Zoo

Flying Penguins in Japan's Northernmost Zoo

Al Gore, Blackfish, and Me: Eco-activist Progress and Prospects for the Future

Reorienting the Space of Containment, or from Zoosphere to Noösphere and Beyond

Zoomorphic Bodies: Moving and Being Moved by Animals

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780773558168

0773558160

9780773558151

0773558152

OCLC:

1085545251