"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.

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.

"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.

In The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys and other significant late twentieth-century artists. Baker's book draws parallels between the animal's place in postmodern art and poststructuralist theory, drawing on works as diverse as Jacques Derrida's recent analysis of the role of animals in philosophical thought and Julian Barnes's best-selling Flaubert's Parrot.

In this imaginative debut, the tale of Noah’s Ark is brilliantly recast as a story of fate and family, set in a near-future London. Over the course of a single night in 2052, a homeless man named Cuthbert Handley sets out on an astonishing quest: to release the animals of the London Zoo. When he was a young boy, Cuthbert’s grandmother had told him he inherited a magical ability to communicate with the animal world—a gift she called the Wonderments. Ever since his older brother’s death in childhood, Cuthbert has heard voices. These maddening whispers must be the Wonderments, he believes, and recently they have promised to reunite him with his lost brother and bring about the coming of a Lord of Animals . . . if he fulfills this curious request. Cuthbert flickers in and out of awareness throughout his desperate pursuit. But his grand plan is not the only thing that threatens to disturb the collective unease of the city. Around him is greater turmoil, as the rest of the world anxiously anticipates the rise of a suicide cult set on destroying the world’s animals along with themselves. Meanwhile, Cuthbert doggedly roams the zoo, cutting open the enclosures, while pressing the animals for information about his brother. Just as this unlikely yet loveable hero begins to release the animals, the cult’s members flood the city’s streets. Has Cuthbert succeeded in harnessing the power of the Wonderments, or has he only added to the chaos—and sealed these innocent animals’ fates? Night of the Animals is an enchanting and inventive tale that explores the boundaries of reality, the ghosts of love and trauma, and the power of redemption.

Instead of summing up the various perspectives of scholars and the variety of ideas to which the term postmodernism has been assigned, this text lets this diversity speak for itself. By bringing together articles and essays on the impact of the postmodern temper on an eclectic range of subjects, Berger presents a few of the many ways different theorists have come to terms with postmodernism, while examining manifestations of postmodernism in the culture of everyday life.

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.

In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals--as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

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