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Subject Area: Animal Studies
Boddice, Rob2009 0-7734-4903-5 400 pages
This book argues that as the movement to protect animals from cruelty gathered pace, it never lost its essentially anthropocentric outlook. The study comprehensively documents the changing place of animals in human life.
Fitzgerald, Amy J.
2005 0-7734-6189-2 248 pages
Recent studies have found high rates of coexistence between animal abuse and family violence. This study explores the resultant questions of how and why animal abuse and other forms of family violence frequently coexist. To address these questions information was gathered through in-depth, semi-standardized interviews with abused women who had at least one pet while they were with their abusive partner. This study focuses on the participants’ experiences and interpretations of how and why these forms of abuse coexist, and the degree to which the animal abuse perpetrated by their partners was instrumental or expressive. It is demonstrated in this book that animal abuse was predominantly instrumentalized by the participants’ abusive partners to gain power and control over them and their children, and it was additionally perpetrated out of jealousy in cases where the pet posed a threat to the attention and devotion the abuser received from his partner. Recommendations are made in light of these research findings, and further research in this area, and human-animal relations more generally, is urged.
Vasantha Rao, Chilkuri
2012 0-7734-3918-4 388 pages
What characterizes the proper ethical treatment of animals as outlined in the Old Testament? Animals play an important role in the Old Testament, and in particular the Pentateuch. Ritual sacrifices were a part of the ancient traditions, and there are rules written into the laws that pertain to this practice as well as the religious approach to animals and nature. In the oft quoted passage from Genesis the call is to not only be fruitful and multiply, but to reign over the earth and subdue it along with the animals that God created. The author explores the fallout of an anthropocentric way of approaching nature that he claims is a misreading of Genesis. Taken out of context this can seem as though ethics is arbitrary in the pursuit of such dominion, but in reality the Pentateuch shows a rather rigid set of laws revealing the careful treatment of animals as sacred beings necessary for the flourishing of human life on earth.
Gathercole, Patricia M.
1995 0-7734-8991-6 142 pages
Medieval manuscript painting offers a rich storehouse of material for literary scholars. This volume concentrates on domestic and wild mammals, rather than on the birds and monsters which have been treated elsewhere. Eighteen sections deal concisely with bears, camels, cats, dogs, elephants, etc., in what sorts of manuscripts they are found, and how they are presented. In addition, there are an introduction, conclusion, bibliography, and seventeen black and white illustrations from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and a color frontispiece.
Mackay, William P.
2002 0-7734-6884-6 408 pages
This work includes keys, illustrations, descriptions and distribution maps of all of the ant species found in New Mexico, a total of 227 species and subspecies, with a listing of another 66 that probably occur in the state. It is designed to allow nearly any biologist to determine the identity of ants, written with a minimum of jargon.
Carter, Richard B.
1991 0-88946-323-9 312 pages
This manuscript is of interest not only to philosophers but also to marine biologists, students of natural history, those involved in the life sciences, zoologists, zoo managers, wildlife preservationists, and ethicists. With interpretive essay.
Hollard, Thoron
2015 1-4955-0327-5 376 pages
The relationship between humans and dolphins has been a subject of interest since earliest times… This fascinating book explores first the classical background to Arion and his dolphin story and then its treatment by French literary and artistic figures who, in a variety of genres and forms, have recreated the story and brought out new meanings more appropriate to their particular times.”
-Chris Dearden,
Emeritus Professor of Classics,
Victoria University of Wellington ,New Zealand
Lee, Sander H.
1992 0-88946-338-7 776 pages
Fifty-five essays by eminent contemporary philosophers on such topics as "The Devaluation of Value," "The Rationality of Pleasure-Seeking Animals," "Goethe's Moral Thinking," "The Second Death of Jean-Paul Sartre," "The Significance of Human Life after Auschwitz," and "What Can You Do with Art?" Complete with an appendix giving the history of the American Society for Value Inquiry and two additional appendices.
Donalson, Malcolm Drew
2006 0-7734-5693-7 252 pages
This study of the wolf is primarily that of the wolf of Biblical metaphor and medieval legend, rather than the wolf of reality. Yet, it demonstrates for students and teachers alike how the wolf of reality underwent a long-term ‘demonization’ in western culture, largely as a result of the literary wolf. It accomplishes this first, through a close investigation of the pertinent passages of the Scriptures and select references in the works of the Church Fathers. The study then examines details from two sources with the classical tradition, Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals and select fables of the Aesopian tradition. This is followed by a descriptive survey of later medieval works: the so-called ‘beast epics,’ the Physiologus (in its Christian recension), and the illustrated bestiaries. The book explores evidence for the ‘wicked wolf’ in the early and later Middle Ages. The conclusion cites the continuing wolf terror in Western Europe as exacerbated by the heyday of the werewolf phenomenon and points to hopeful signs for the conservation of the wolf. In all, this work shows how the diabolical wolf – only a symbol in the Gospels – developed, grew much ‘larger than life,’ and persisted through late antiquity (when a new term, luparius, was coined for the hunters of the real wolf) and throughout the Middle Ages; and that the ‘agent of the Devil’ was not at all assisted by the observations of naturalists or encyclopedists like Aelian or Isidore of Seville, nor by the image of the greedy but stupid wolf of Aesop. The book is enhanced by photographs, including eight photos of actual wolves by professional photographers. A very select bibliography provides a starting point for the study of the wolf in western civilization, and includes both patristic and medieval works, along with modern works.
Johnson, Kathleen R.
2000 0-7734-7735-7 176 pages
This study examines the content and structure of 59 children’s realistic animal stories for ideological expressions of anthropocentrism. It concludes that the texts send ambivalent and contradictory messages: while children’s stories may serve to inform the reader about actual and potential connections to other animals, they also contain elements that continue to privilege the dominant view.
Bernhardt-House, Phillip A.
2010 0-7734-3714-2 520 pages
This book is a typological study of canids and canid imagery in Medieval Celtic cultures. It explores texts ranging from early Irish legal tracts and heroic narrative to exempla from Welsh, Breton, and later Scottish sources.
Kohen, Elli
2003 0-7734-6778-5 444 pages
This unique book is structured by country, from prehistoric to present times. An effort has been made to revive the soul and ambience of different environments as it evolved over the centuries. The style is intentionally folksy, to reproduce the special sense of humor, puns or poetry of different countries.