Description
Book SynopsisAnimal Metropolis brings a Canadian perspective to the growing field of animal history, ranging across species and cities, from the beavers who engineered Stanley Park to the carthorses who shaped the city of Montreal. Some essays consider animals as spectacle: orca captivity in Vancouver, polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, fish on display in the Dominion Fisheries Museum, and the racialized memory of Jumbo the elephant in St. Thomas, Ontario. Others examine the bodily intimacies of shared urban spaces: the regulation of rabid dogs in Banff, the maternal politics of pure milk in Hamilton and the circulation of tetanus bacilli from horse to human in Toronto. Another considers the marginalization of women in Canada's animal welfare movement.
The authors collectively push forward from a historiography that features nonhuman animals as objects within human-centered inquiries to a historiography that considers the eclectic contacts, exchanges, and cohabitation of human and nonhuman animals.
Trade ReviewIt is gratifying to see more involvement from historians in this broad and growing area. - Margaret E. Derry, The Canadian Historical Review
The eleven authors of this text contribute great insight into the depository of âCanamalia Urbanisââ| As Animal Metropolis presents curious stories of nonhuman animals in Canada, readers and scholars should be inspired beyond pondering and ask with humility what responsibilities come with this knowledge. - Stephanie Eccles, BC Studies
This playful and thought-provoking collection of essays makes a persuasive case for the study of urban animals in a country long celebrated for its iconic wildlife. This is an important contribution to the growing fields of animal studies and animal history, and one that will serve as a catalyst for a new generation of scholarship. -Jennifer Bonnell, Assistant Professor, Department of History, York University
Tracing often stunning connections between animals, environments, cultures, and histories, Animal Metropolis explores an extraordinarily diverse set of encounters between humans and other animals in Canadian history. Each chapter was a revelation, offering a timely and provocative look at Canada and its denizens. -Nigel Rothfels, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Animal Metropolis provides a fascinating taste of what a history that decentres the human might look like. Scholars and students of history, philosophy, sociology, human or critical geography, and animal studies, to name a few, will find chapters that provoke, challenge, and delight. -Nik Taylor, Associate Professor of Sociology, Flinders University
A beautifully written book with a diversity of chapters that can be read as stand-alone papers . . . I readily recommend this book--it offers a mix of easy reading with quality academic research and writing. Janette Youngs, Anthrozoos
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Canamalia Urbanis
- Darcy Ingram, Christabelle Sthna, and Joanna Dean
- 1. The Memory of an Elephant: Savagery, Civilization and Spectacle
- Christabelle Sethna
- 2. The Urban Horse and the Shaping of Montreal, 1840-1914
- Sherry Olson
- 3. Wild Things; Taming Canada's Animal Welfare Movement
- Darcy Ingram
- 4. Fish out of Water: Fish Exhibition in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada
- William Knight
- 5. The Beavers of Stanley Park
- Rachel Poliquin
- 6. Species at Risk: C. Tetani, the Horse and the Human
- Joanna Dean
- 7. Got Milk? Dirty Cows, Unfit Mothers, and Infant Mortality, 1880-1940
- Carla Hutak
- 8. Howl: The 1952-56 Rabies Crisis and the Creation of the Urban Wild at Banff
- George Colpitts
- 9. Arctic Capital: Managing Polar Bears in Churchill, Manitoba
- Kristoffer Archibald
- 10. Cetaceans in the City: Orca Captivity, Animal Rights, and Environmental Values in Vancouver
- Jason Colby
- Epilogue: Why Animals Matter in Urban History, or Why Cities Matter in Animal History
- Sean Kheraj
- Contributors
- Index
