This textbook provides a full overview of human-animal studies. It focuses on the conceptual construction of animals in American culture and the way in which it reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical human relationships rooted in racism, sexism, and class privilege.

Human-animal studies is an academic field that has grown exponentially over the past decade. It explores the whys, hows, and whats of human-animal relations: why animals are represented and configured in different ways in human cultures and societies around the world; how they are imagined, experienced, and given significance; what these relationships might signify about being human; and what about these relationships might be improved for the sake of the individuals as well as the communities concerned. The Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies presents a collection of original essays from artists and scholars who have established themselves internationally on the basis of specific and significant new contributions to human-animal studies. This international, interdisciplinary handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of human-animal studies, sociology, anthropology, biology, environmental studies, geography, cultural studies, history, philosophy, media studies, gender studies, literature, psychology, ethology, and visual studies.

In more than thirty essays, Social Animals examines the role of animals in human society. Collected from a wide range of periodicals and books, these important works of scholarship examine such issues as how animal shelter workers view the pets in their care, why some people hoard animals, animals and women who experience domestic abuse, philosophical and feminist analyses of our moral obligations toward animals, and many other topics.

While much has been written on environmental politics on the one hand, and animal ethics and welfare on the other, animal politics is underexamined. There are key political implications in the increase of animal protection laws, the rights of nature, and political parties dedicated to animals.

Split into three sections, Teaching the Animal provides in-depth analysis of the nature of the discipline, the resources available, expectations of students and faculty, and a number of sample curricula in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences.

Part I. Animals in the landscape of law, politics, and public policy. Animal rights / Gary Francione and Anna Charlton -- Animals in political theory / Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka --,Animals as living property / David Favre -- The human-animal bond / James Serpell -- Animal sheltering / Leslie Irvine -- Roaming dogs / Arnold Arluke and Kate Atema -- Misothery : contempt for animals and nature, its origins, purposes, and repercussions / James B. Mason -- Continental approaches to animals and animality / Ralph Acampora -- Animals as legal subjects / Paul Waldau -- The struggle for compassion and justice through critical animal studies / Carol Gigliotti -- Interspecies dialogue and animal ethics : the feminist care perspective / Josephine Donovan -- Part II. Animal intentionality, agency, and reflexive thinking. Cetacean cognition / Lori Marino -- History and animal agencies / Chris Pearson -- Animals as sentient commodities / Rhoda WilPart I.kie -- Animal work / Jocelyne Porcher -- Animals as reflexive thinkers : the Aponoian paradigm / Mark Rowlands and Susana Monsó -- Part III. Animals as objects in science, food, spectacle, and sport. The ethics of animal research / Bernard Rollin -- The ethics of food animal production / Paul Thompson -- Animals as scientific objects / Mike Michael -- The problem with zoos / Randy Malamud -- Wolf hunting and the ethics of predator control / John Vucetich and Michael P. --Nelson -- Part IV. Animals in cultural representations. Practice and ethics of the use of animals in contemporary art /Joe Zammit-Lucia -- Animals in folklore / Boria Sax -- Part V. Animals in ecosystems. Archaeozoology / Juliet Cluton-Brock -- Animals and ecological science / Anita Guerrini -- Staging privilege, proximity, and "extreme animal tourism" / Jane Desmond -- Commensal species / Terry O'Connor -- Lively cities : people, animals, and urban ecosystems / Marcus Owens and Jennifer Wolch -- Animals in religion / Stephen R.L. Clark.

While many scholars who write about animals deal with animal agency in some way, this volume is the first to position the question of nonhuman agency as the primary focus of inquiry. Section I presents studies of actual animals demonstrating agency; Section II moves agency into new terrain while considering key representations of animal agency in literature; Section III analyzes animals as mediators and as conveyances of human-to-human communication;and Section IV investigates the agency of beings who defy conventional species categories. The Envoi demonstrates how the microscopic polyp is interwoven into notions of agency and mythical superagency. This volume's interdisciplinary explorations press hard on issues of agency to open up space for more questions about how we can understand relationships between the human and the nonhuman.