This book explores the connection between saints and animals, and how the power over animals has been a characteristic of saints from their beginnings in the Early Church. The connection between saints and humans is examined, with the saint as a human rising beyond humanity, touching the divine, and the non-human animal as a creature, which is connected to and yet removed from humanity and which may have a connection to the sacred itself. This volume transcends traditional religious boundaries by including Christian saints as well as similar figures in Islam and Norse religions. It operates on the cusp of two exciting and innovative fields: hagiographic and animal studies. It shows the complexities of human-animal interaction and the sacred: authorities clashing with experiential knowledge, metaphorical animals as opposed to real, animals ranging from helpers or opponents of saints, disguises of demons, or identity markers of a human community. Companion Species will be of value to scholars and students interested in medieval history, Europe, and religion, as well as social and cultural history.

“When Species Meet is a breathtaking meditation on the intersection between humankind and dog, philosophy and science, and macro and micro cultures.” —Cameron Woo, Publisher of Bark magazine In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending over $38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.” In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal-human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending—socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.” Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal-human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism. One of the founders of the posthumanities, Donna J. Haraway is professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of many books and widely read essays, including The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness and the now-classic essay “The Cyborg Manifesto,” she received the J. D. Bernal Prize in 2000, a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Social Studies in Science.

This Companion commemorates the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species and examines its main arguments. Drawing on the expertise of leading authorities in the field, it also provides the contexts - religious, social, political, literary, and philosophical - in which the Origin was written.

In this book, Nik Taylor and Heather Fraser consider how we might better understand human-animal companionship in the context of domestic violence. The authors advocate an intersectional feminist understanding, drawing on a variety of data from numerous projects they have conducted with people, about their companion animals and links between domestic violence and animal abuse, arguing for a new understanding that enables animals to be constituted as victims of domestic violence in their own right. The chapters analyse the mutual, loving connections that can be formed across species, and in households where there is domestic violence. Companion Animals and Domestic Violence also speaks to the potentially soothing, healing and recovery oriented aspects of human-companion animal relationships before, during and after the violence, and will be of interest to various academic disciplines including social work, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, geography, as well as to professionals working in domestic violence or animal welfare service provision.

Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges—of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location—are increasingly complex. The subsequent “Companion Species Manifesto,” which further questions the human–nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization. Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of Haraway’s thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human–nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more. The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway’s “Chthulucene Manifesto,” in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures.

Clinical Endocrinology of Companion Animals offers fast access to clinically relevant information on managing the patient with endocrine disease. Written by leading experts in veterinary endocrinology, each chapter takes the same structure to aid in the rapid retrieval of information, offering information on pathogenesis, signalment, clinical signs, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and prevention for a broad list of endocrine disorders. Chapters begin with brief summaries for quick reference, then delve into greater detail. With complete coverage of the most common endocrine diseases, the book includes chapters on conditions in dogs, cats, horses, ferrets, reptiles, and other species. Clinical Endocrinology of Companion Animals is a highly practical resource for any veterinarian treating these common diseases.

Health and welfare issues of brachycephalic (flat-faced) animals are one of the most pressing problems facing companion animals right now. Dogs, in particular, are suffering from a ‘brachycephalic crisis’ resulting from a perfect storm where predispositions to an array of health issues are amplified by a population boom for certain brachycephalic breeds such as the French Bulldog and Pug. But yet, for many owners, these dogs represent the perfect companion: endearing personas and cute looks in a socially desirable package. So where is the truth in all of this? This book will equip veterinary professionals, animal welfare scientists, breeders and owners with the fuller story about brachycephalic health and welfare. The first half of the book provides the context of how and why we are in this crisis, offering in-depth historical, social, ethical, communication, nursing, welfare, epidemiological, genetics and international perspectives. The second half shifts towards the clinical arena, with chapters that cover the background, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the many unique healthcare needs of brachycephalic animals. Cutting-edge knowledge is shared on a range of disciplines including respiratory disease, ophthalmology, dermatology, dentistry, neurology, obesity, reproduction and anesthesia. With twenty chapters written by world-leading experts, lifetimes of experience and knowledge are condensed into the first book dedicated exclusively to brachycephaly in companion animals. This essential reference resource will inform, challenge and stimulate; it will open your mind to new opportunities for you to improve the welfare of brachycephalic animals by your personal and collective choices and actions. But prepare to be surprised: you may just find that your views on brachycephaly in companion animals will be changed forever.

"A first-of-its kind, in-depth investigation into how companion animals and their humans have carved out a new type of family - the multi-species family - in which identities like parent, child, grandparent, and sibling transcend species to create new forms of kinship"--

“After many years of believing that I never dream of anything, I dreamed of Africa.” Over a decade after leaving her three sons behind in Liberia, Hannah Musgrave realizes she has to leave her farm in the Adirondacks and find out what has happened to them and the chimpanzees for whom she created a sanctuary. The Darling is the story of her return to the wreckage of west Africa and the story of her past, from her middle-class American upbringing to her years in the Weather Underground. It is also one of the most powerful novels of the decade, an unforgettable tale of growth and loss, and an unstinting exploration of some of the most troubling issues of our time: terrorism, race, and the contact between the first world and the third. Hannah Musgrave, the narrator of The Darling, tells us she first travelled to Africa in the mid-1970s, to escape prosecution for her radical political activities with the Weathermen. Arriving in Liberia to work in a medical research lab, Hannah – also known by her alias, Dawn Carrington – meets Woodrow Sundiata, an official in the ministry of public health, and they fall immediately in love. Courting with Woodrow, an intelligent, ambitious man, means encountering his other life in his ancestral village of Fuama – a life that could scarcely be more different from Hannah’s affluent childhood as the daughter of a bestselling pediatrician. Hannah and Woodrow start a family, but she feels herself to be somehow estranged from her life in Liberia and curiously detached from her husband and three sons. Still in search of herself as her children grow older, Hannah develops a closer and closer bond with the chimpanzees at the lab, whom she calls “dreamers.” During the early 1980s, Liberian society grows more unstable, until an illiterate soldier named Samuel Doe brutally overthrows and assassinates the president. Hannah’s courageous intervention with Doe leads to Woodrow’s release from detention, but at a price: she must return to the US, leaving her family behind. Hannah feels that her dreamers will feel her absence more deeply than her family will. In the US Hannah briefly reconnects with her parents after years of estrangement before returning to her friends from her underground years. One of them, Zack Procter, is involved with a plan to spring Charles Taylor – an attractive Liberian politician – from jail, and Hannah involves herself with the plot, genuinely believing that Taylor will bring social democracy to west Africa. Hannah gets permission to return to her family in the mid-1980s, and decides that this time things will be different: she will take charge of her home life, ousting Woodrow’s young cousin Jeanette, and she will build a sanctuary for her chimpanzees. But Charles Taylor has also returned, and his slow and bloody rebellion against Doe leads, eventually, to a night of horrific violence in which Woodrow is murdered and Hannah’s teenaged children disappear. Amidst chaos and almost unbelievable bloodshed, Hannah has time only to move her dreamers to Boniface Island before facing the heartrending decision to escape Liberia, leaving her children behind. More than ten years will pass before she can return to discover their fate, and understand her own.