Reading Cats and Dogs

Françoise Besson is emerita professor at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures, in Toulouse, FranceZélia M. Bora is founder of the Commission for Animal Welfare and contributes to the postgraduate program at the Federal University of Paraiba in Brazil.Marianne Marroum is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon.Scott Slovic is university distinguished professor of environmental humanities at the University of Idaho in the US.

Within a mile of my home I encounter animals along a wide spectrum of constraint and freedom, ranging from pampered hyperdomestication to lethal neglect. This fascinating collection of chapters extends that variety to the international, exploring animal-centered works of literature out of Beijing and Brussels, Soweto and Sri Lanka, Cameroon and Brazil. Spilling over into the philosophical and affectingly autobiographical, the contributors collectively challenge and valorize anew our views of animal companionship. Above all they emphasize that, enveloped by cross-cultural globalization, mass species extinction and slaughter, zoonotic pandemic and climate change, human and non-human animals’ fates are irrevocably entwined.

• Table of ContentsPrologue by Kev ReynoldsIntroduction by Françoise Besson and Scott SlovicSection I: Stray and Feral Companions1.Karla Armbruster, “Our Feral Future: Dog Stories and the Anthropocene”2.Önder Cetin, “When You Love the Stray Animals as Much as Your Own Pets: The Case of Companion Animals in Turkey”3.Marianne Marroum, “Identity, Love, and Abuse in Laila al-Othman’s Cat Stories”4.Lorraine Kerslake, “Of Mice, Rabbits, and Other Companions in Beatrix Potter’s More than Human World”5.Niroshima Gunasekera, “Walking Through the Animal Kingdom: A Search for the Near and Dear”6.Qianqian Cheng, “From the Forbidden City to the Locked-down Megalopolis: Reading the Behaviors of Cat Lovers in China”Section II: The Usefulness of Companion Animals7.Anna Re, “Memorable Dogs of Italian Literature”8.Claire Cazejous-Augé, “Cross-species Cooperation: Hunting with Dogs in Contemporary American Nature Writing”9.Keita Hatooka, “Let the Sleeping Dogs Tell Lies: Companionship and Solitude in Shu