Making Animal Meaning

Linda Kalof is Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. She is also founder of the Michigan State University interdisciplinary graduate specialization in Animal Studies: Humanities and Social Science Perspectives. Georgina M. Montgomery, an award-winning educator, is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University with a joint appointment in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of History.

This wide-ranging set of essays explores the varied ways in which humans have sought to understand animals as they are drawn or compelled to enter human cultures. Sheep and jaguars, gorillas and hamsters, cats and dogs, pets and pests, predators and prey, all jostle here with writers from diverse academic disciplines, who would make sense of the multifarious lives and relations shared by animals and humans. Kalof and Montgomery's challenging collection helps us to appreciate the complex, conflicting, and complementary ways of making animal meaning. —Tom Tyler, Oxford Brookes University A valuable contribution to theorizing what other animals mean to humans and how animals themselves create meaning. These original essays provide insight into how meanings are constructed and played out in specific contexts. The volume covers impressive ground – across disciplines, geographic locations, and time periods – while simultaneously maintaining its interesting focus. —Amy J. Fitzgerald, author of Animal Abuse and Family Violence: Researching the Interrelationships of Abusive Power and co-editor of The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. With essays exploring both broad methodological questions and more narrow case studies, Making Animal Meaning offers critical insights into the complex ways animals and humans shape each other’s lives, while also providing readers with needed reflections on the field of Animal Studies. —Nigel Rothfels, author of Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo

• Contents Introduction Part 1: Making New Animal Meanings Animal Writes: Historiography, Disciplinarity, and the Animal Trace Mobility and the Making of Animal Meaning: The Kinetics of “Vermin” and “Wildlife” in Southern Africa Cannibalism, Consumption, and Kinship in Animal Studies Part 2: Applying New Animal Meanings The Renaissance Transformation of Animal Meaning: From Petrarch to Montaigne On the Trail of the Devil Cat: Hunting for the Jaguar in the United States and Mexico Animal Deaths and the Written Record of History: The Politics of Pet Obituaries Golden Retrievers Are White, Pit Bulls Are Black, and Chihuahuas Are Hispanic: Representations of Breeds of Dog and Issues of Race in Popular Culture Interspecies Families, Freelance Dogs, and Personhood: Saved Lives and Being One at an Assistance Dog Agency Animal Meaning in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats Animals at the End of the World: Notes toward a Transspecies Eschatology Bibliography Contributors Index