"The putative mission of zoos - education and conservation - yield doubtful results, education because its information relies on description and exposition instead of narrative, conservation because only a few large, showy vertebrates receive the most effort. By controlling reproduction and restricting evolution, zoos reduce animals to artifacts - unattached ecological fragments - and ultimately revoke their ontological status as part of the natural world." "Spotte's argument assumes manifestations that impinge on contemporary theories of art, film, literature, photography, and science, the whole anchored securely by the twin poles of semiotics and simulation. This willingness to grapple with high-level theory - and to take intellectual risks - sets Zoos in Postmodernism apart from other treatments of zoos in contemporary western literature."--BOOK JACKET.

"Themed spaces have, at their foundation, an overarching narrative, symbolic complex, or story that drives the overall context of their spaces. Theming, in some very unique ways, has expanded beyond previous stereotypes and oversimplifications of culture and place to now consider new and often controversial topics, themes, and storylines."--Publisher's website.

U2’s ongoing popular appeal is constructed in the spaces between band and fan, commercialism and community, spirituality and nihilism; finding meaning in a surface-oriented popular culture and contradiction in the depths of political and faith-based institutions. The band’s long-term success and continued relevance is a result of their ability to hold these energies in tension without one subsuming the other—to live in the liminal space that such contradictions invite. U2’s mythic trajectory was born from a bygone electronic era, realized in our current digital era but with an eye on the forthcoming virtual era; it is a new myth for the whole world, found in the most unlikely of places, popular culture. This book approaches the band’s mythic trajectory through a combination of rhetorical analysis and autoethnographic explorations that unveil the more personal experiences most of us have with media. Drawing heavily upon the works of Marshal McLuhan, Joseph Campbell, Thomas S. Frentz, and Janice Hocker Rushing, Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2 unpacks U2’s popular appeal through the lenses of Agape (spiritual, communal love), Amor (romantic love), and Eros (erotic love). Check out the book's official website for additional information: https//:www.u2mythos.com

Metamorphoses of the Zoo marshals a unique compendium of critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that cultivate humanity's biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These take the form of radical restructurings of what were formerly zoos or map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes to moral progress on the inter-species front and eco-psychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified or urbanizing.

Political Animals offers a unique study and perspective on the relationship between politics and the art found in American zoos and aquariums. Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump examine the ways that zoos and aquariums have successfully served as sculptural gardens for the masses and have incorporated art and architecture that convey political messages about both the patrons and the animals. This book demonstrates how art has been used for a range of economic and political purposes including providing jobs, a medium to reach out to minority interest groups, a fundraising tool, and a surrogate for the animals themselves. Donahue and Trump skillfully analyze and compare zoos to other areas of public art to highlight the calculated strategies on the part of the zoos that have incorporated a range of artistic styles for different audiences. Incorporating photographs of zoo and aquarium art from around the country, Political Animals is an exciting and captivating text for the mind and eye.

Offers an appraisal of the various postmodern and poststructural theories sweeping the discipline of international relations. Tracing the development, importation, and application of these epistemologies, the author develops a series of typologies for the scholar working in international relations.

Riddled with intertextual references and notorious for their explicit portrayal of sex, drugs, and the occasional rock 'n' roll, the novels of Bret Easton Ellis reveal many layers. The novels are often accused of not making sense--but they instead make many senses. Their semantic complexity is obvious when put under a theoretical lens as provided by Jacques Derrida. His semiotic analysis, which focuses on the instability of meaning and is shaped by key terms such as differance, the trace, and the supplement, offers the ideal framework to look behind Ellis's obsession with surfaces. Aimed at aficionados of Ellis's works as well as students of contemporary American fiction and literary theory, this book discusses the central issues in Ellis's novels through 2019 and offers a new perspective for the practical use of Derrida's ideas. In order to ensure accessibility, a theoretical chapter introduces all the concepts necessary to understand a Derridean analysis of Ellis's fiction. As Rip says in Imperial Bedrooms: "It means so many things, Clay."

From sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing examines the cultural and poetic history of preserving animals in lively postures. But why would anyone want to preserve an animal, and what is this animal-thing now? Rachel Poliquin suggests that taxidermy is entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning with and within the natural world. Her study draws out the longings at the heart of taxidermy—the longing for wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance. In so doing, The Breathless Zoo explores the animal spectacles desired by particular communities, human assumptions of superiority, the yearnings for hidden truths within animal form, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange human existence, being both within and apart from nature.

Despite hundreds of millions of visitors each year, zoos have remained outside of the realm of philosophical analysis. This lack of theoretical examination is interesting considering the paradoxical position within which a zoo is situated, being a space of animal confinement as well as a site that provides valuable tools for species conservation, public education, and entertainment. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? argues that the zoo is a legitimate space of academic inquiry. The modes of communication taking place at the zoo that keep drawing us back time and time again beg for a careful investigation. In this book, the meaning of the zoo as communicative space is explored. This book relies on the phenomenological method from Edmund Husserl and a rhetorical approach to examine the interaction between people and animals in the zoo space. Phenomenology, the philosophy of examining the engaged everyday lived experience, is a natural method to use in the project. Despite its rich history and tradition it is interesting that there are very few books explaining “how to do” phenomenology. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? provides a detailed account of how to actually conduct a phenomenological analysis. The author spent thousands of hours in zoos watching people and animals interact as well as talking with people both formally and informally. This book asks readers to bracket their preconceptions of what goes on in the zoo and, instead, to explore the meaning of powerful zoo experiences while reminding us of the troubled history of zoos.

These essays set out to consider the possible future of theology in the light of the so-called postmodern condition. They are necessarily deeply interdisciplinary, since it is a characteristic of post-Enlightenment thought to disintegrate the lines of definition which separate areas of reflection in the human sciences. Theology, we believe, must be exposed to the consequences of what has happened in literature and critical theory if it is to have any future outside the protected and isolated environment of ecclesia and the communities of the faithful. The authors represent a great diversity of opinion and discipline. Not all of us would agree with one another, and certainly there is no agreement as to what constitutes postmodernity. Yet this very diversity forms the strength and importance of the book, for there are no simple answers or straightforward definitions. Theology must recognize the pluralism within which it now must carry out its task and which alone defines its future. The keynote of the discussion is the tragic. Tragedy takes us back to the Greeks, and to Nietzsche. Both feature centrally in this presentation. It also suggests a future, a return, perhaps, through literature to theology, and not merely an end of the story as it has been traditionally sold.