1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910300031203321

Titolo

Animal Biography : Re-framing Animal Lives / / edited by André Krebber, Mieke Roscher

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

3-319-98288-5

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (268 pages)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, , 2634-6346

Disciplina

590

Soggetti

Literature - Philosophy

Literature, Modern - 20th century

Literature, Modern - 21st century

Animal welfare - Moral and ethical aspects

Literary Theory

Contemporary Literature

Animal Ethics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: Biographies, Animals and Individuality, André Krebber and Mieke Roscher -- 2. Living, Biting Monitors, a Morose Howler, and Other Infamous Animals: Animal Biographies in Ethology and Zoo Biology, Matthew Chrulew -- 3. Finding a Man and his Horse in the Archive?, Hilda Kean -- 4. Recovering and Reconstructing Animal Selves in Literary Autozoographies, Frederike Middelhoff -- 5. A Dog’s Life: The Challenges and Possibilities of Animal Biography, Aaron Skabelund -- 6. “We Know Them All” – Does it Make Sense to Create a Collective Biography of the European Bison?, Markus Krzoska -- 7. Animal Life Stories; Or, the Making of Animal Subjects in Primatological Narratives of Fieldwork, Mira Shah -- 8. Taxidermy's Literary Biographies, Susan McHugh -- 9. Caesar – The Rise and Dawn of a Humanimalistic Identity, Daniel Wolf -- 10. Postscript, Posthuman: Werner Herzog's “Crocodile” at the End of the World, Dominic O’Key -- 11. The Elephant’s I: Looking for Abu’l Abbas, Radhika Subramaniam -- 12. Topsy: The Elephant We Must Never Forget, Kim Stallwood -- 13. Online Animal (Auto-)



Biographies: What Does it Mean When We “Give Animals a Voice”?.

Sommario/riassunto

While historiography is dominated by attempts that try to standardize and de-individualize the behavior of animals, history proves to be littered with records of the exceptional lives of unusual animals. This book introduces animal biography as an approach to the re-framing of animals as both objects of knowledge as well as subjects of individual lives. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective and bringing together scholars from, among others, literary, historical and cultural studies, the texts collected in this volume seek to refine animal biography as a research method and framework to studying, capturing, representing and acknowledging animal others as individuals. From Heini Hediger’s biting monitor, Hachikō and Murr to celluloid ape Caesar and the mourning of Topsy’s gruesome death, the authors discuss how animal biographies are discovered and explored through connections with humans that can be traced in archives, ethological fieldwork and novels, and probe the means of constructing animal biographies from taxidermy to film, literature and social media. Thus, they invite deeper conversations with socio-political and cultural contexts that allow animal biographies to provide narratives that reach beyond individual life stories, while experimenting with particular forms of animal biographies that might trigger animal activism and concerns for animal well-being, spur historical interest and enrich the literary imagination.