Animal studies
Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including
History
Animal studies became popular in the 1970s as an interdisciplinary subject, animal studies exists at the intersection of a number of different fields of study such as journals and books series, etc.[2] Different fields began to turn to animals as an important topic at different times and for various reasons, and these separate disciplinary histories shape how scholars approach animal studies. Historically, the field of environmental history has encouraged attention to animals.[3]
Ethics
Throughout Western history, humankind has put itself above the "nonhuman species."
Some still believe that the primary purpose of animal interaction is solely for food.[2] However, animal domestication created a new intimate bond between human and non-human, and changed the way that humans live their lives.[8] Theorists interested in the role of animals in literature, culture, and Continental philosophy also consider the late work of Jacques Derrida a driving force behind the rise of interest in animal studies in the humanities.[6] Derrida's final lecture series, The Animal That Therefore I Am, examined how interactions with animal life affect human attempts to define humanity and the self through language. Taking up Derrida's deconstruction and extending it to other cultural territory, Cary Wolfe published Animal Rites in 2003 and critiqued earlier animal rights philosophers such as Peter Singer and Thomas Regan. Wolfe's study points out an insidious humanism at play in their philosophies and others. Recently also the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben published a book on the question of the animal: The Open. Man and Animal.
Art
Animals also played an essential role in the art community. One of the earliest forms of art was on the walls of caves from the early man, where they usually drew what they haunted. The country of Namibia has a large collection of ancient rock art from the Stone Age. The skillfully engraved depiction of animal tracks provides important information about the animals of that time.[9] Then, in the Middle Ages, animals would appear for more religious reasons. Later in the 15th century, artists began coinciding with animals as a serious subject when discoveries in foreign lands were brought back to England. During the Renaissance era, the influential artist Leonardo da Vinci took interest in animal studies.[10] Leonardo da Vinci studied animal anatomy to create anatomically accurate drawings of various species.[10] Years later, animal representation took the form of woodworking, lithography, and photographs.[11] In the late 1800s, photographers became interested in capturing animal locomotion.[12]
Research topics and methodologies
Researchers in animal studies examine the questions and issues that arise when traditional modes of humanistic and scientific inquiry begin to take animals seriously as subjects of thought and activity. Students of animal studies may examine how humanity is defined in relation to animals, or how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. In fact, animals often elicit fear in humans.[13] A well-known animal phobia is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes.[13] People with animal phobias tend to negatively generalize animals, even species that are harmless.[13] In most movies, predatory animals such as sharks and wolves are usually the antagonists, but this only causes significant damage to their reputation and makes people fear what they think their true nature is.[14] In order to do so, animal studies pays close attention to the ways that humans anthropomorphize animals, and asks how humans might avoid bias in observing other creatures. Anthropomorphized animals are frequently found in children's books and films. Researchers are analyzing the positive and negative effects of anthropomorphized animals on a child's view of the non-human species.[15] In addition, Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions, examines how dioramas created for the American Museum of Natural History showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human nuclear family, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild.[16] Critical approaches in animal studies have also considered representations of non-human animals in popular culture, including species diversity in animated films.[17] By highlighting these issues, animal studies strives to re-examine traditional ethical, political, and epistemological categories in the context of a renewed attention to and respect for animal life. The assumption that focusing on animals might clarify human knowledge is neatly expressed in Claude Lévi-Strauss's famous dictum that animals are "good to think."[18]
See also
- Intersectionality
- Anthrozoology (human–animal studies)
- Animality studies
- Critical animal studies
- Ecocriticism
- Ecosophy
References
- ISSN 1568-5306.
- ^ S2CID 239684980.
- ISSN 1063-1119.
- ^ Atkinson, Elizabeth (2022). An exploration of Impossible encounters. Bristol, UK/ Chicago, USA: Intellect.
- ^ PMID 37174528.
- ^ a b Gorman, James (12 January 2012). "Animal Studies Move From the Lab to the Lecture Hall". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
- ISBN 9780199827039.
- S2CID 85743866.
- PMID 37703266.
- ^ PMID 31295863.
- ^ Gillmor, Robert (2022). "History of Wildlife Art". Mall galleries.
- ^ Scharf, Aaron (1962). "Painting, Photography, and the Image of Movement". The Burlington Magazine. 104 (710): 186.
- ^ S2CID 184485476.
- ^ "Why Representation of Animals in Media Matters". Animals and Media. 2021.
- PMC 8211438.
- S2CID 147688966.
- ^ Laurie, Timothy (2015), "Becoming-Animal Is A Trap For Humans", Deleuze and the Non-Human, eds. Hannah Stark and Jon Roffe.
- ^ Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963, p. 89.
Bibliography
- Bjorkdahl, Kristian, and Alex Parrish (2017) Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion. Lantham: Lexington Press. ISBM 9781498558457.
- Boehrer, Bruce, editor, A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Berg, 2009, ISBN 9781845203955.
- ISBN 978-0231161220.
- De Ornellas, Kevin (2014). The Horse in Early Modern English Culture, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 978-1-61147-658-3.
- ISBN 978-0823227914.
- ISBN 978-0816650460.
- Kalof, Linda (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199927142.
- ISBN 9780231147873.
- ISBN 978-0813930602.
- ISBN 978-0415780957.
- ISBN 0300102089.
- ISBN 9780199827015.
- ISBN 0816641064.
External links
- Animal Studies Journal
- Animal Rights History
- Animal Studies and Film: An interview with Matthew Brower, professor of graduate Art History at York University
- Animal Studies Online Bibliography
- Animals and the Law
- Australian Animal Studies Group
- Italian Animal Studies Review
- Animal Studies at Michigan State University