Making Animal Meaning

An elucidating collection of ten original essays, Making Animal Meaning reconceptualizes methods for researching animal histories and rethinks the contingency of the human-animal relationship. The vibrant and diverse field of animal studies is detailed in these interdisciplinary discussions, which include voices from a broad range of scholars and have an extensive chronological and geographical reach. These exciting discourses capture the most compelling theoretical underpinnings of animal significance while exploring meaning-making through the study of specific spaces, species, and human-animal relations. A deeply thoughtful collection — vital to understanding central questions of agency, kinship, and animal consumption — these essays tackle the history and philosophy of constructing animal meaning.

Argues that any adequate neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic must account for our distinctive nature as the meaning-seeking animal.

A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.

A pathbreaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942 populated by animals.

A fresh assessment of the workings of animal symbolism in diverse cultures. Reconsiders the concept of totemism and exposes common fallacies in symbolic interpretation.

“The Secret History meets Jennifer’s Body. This brilliant, sharp, weird book skewers the heightened rhetoric of obsessive female friendship in a way I don’t think I've ever seen before. I loved it and I couldn’t put it down.” - Kristen Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This: "Cat Person" and Other Stories The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one. "We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?" Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more different from the other members of her master's program at New England's elite Warren University. A self-conscious scholarship student who prefers the company of her imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight it seems their bodies might become permanently fused. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' exclusive monthly "Smut Salon," and finds herself drawn as if by magic to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, an audacious art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into Bunny world, and starts to take part in the off-campus "Workshop" where they devise their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision. A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale about loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and female friendship and desire, Bunny is the dazzlingly original second book from an author with tremendous "insight into the often-baffling complexities of being a woman" (The Atlantic).

Get the latest advances in zoo and wild animal medicine in one invaluable reference! Written by internationally recognized experts, Fowler's Zoo and Wild Animal Medicine: Current Therapy, Volume 10 provides a practical guide to the latest research and clinical management of captive and free-ranging wild animals. For each animal, coverage includes topics such as biology, anatomy and special physiology, reproduction, restraint and handling, housing requirements, nutrition and feeding, surgery and anesthesia, diagnostics, and treatment protocols. New topics in this edition include holistic treatments, antibiotic resistance in aquariums, non-invasive imaging for amphibians, emerging reptile viruses, and African ground hornbill medicine, in addition to giant anteater medicine, Brucella in marine animals, and rhinoceros birth parameters. With coverage of many subjects where information has not been readily available, Fowler’s is a resource you don’t want to be without. Fowler's Current Therapy format ensures that each volume in the series covers all-new topics with timely information on current topics of interest in the field. Focused coverage offers just the right amount of depth — often fewer than 10 pages in a chapter — which makes the material easier to access and easier to understand. General taxon-based format covers all terrestrial vertebrate taxa plus selected topics on aquatic and invertebrate taxa. Updated information from the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS) includes records from their growing database for 2.3 million animals (374,000 living) and 23,000 taxa, which can serve as a basis for new research. Expert, global contributors include authors from the U.S. and 25 other countries, each representing trends in their part of the world, and each focusing on the latest research and clinical management of captive and free-ranging wild animals. NEW! All-new topics and contributors ensure that this volume addresses the most current issues relating to zoo and wild animals. NEW! Content on emerging diseases includes topics such as COVID-19, rabbit hemorrhagic disease, yellow fever in South American primates, monitoring herpesviruses in multiple species, and canine distemper in unusual species. NEW! Emphasis on management includes coverage of diversity in zoo and wildlife medicine. NEW! Panel of international contributors includes, for the first time, experts from Costa Rica, Estonia, Ethiopia, India, Norway, and Singapore, along with many other countries. NEW! Enhanced eBook version is included with each print purchase, providing a fully searchable version of the entire text and access to all of its text, figures, and references.