Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History

"It’s a good overview. The editor, Dorothee Brantz, who is German and teaches in Berlin, has a PhD from the University of Chicago. Beastly Natures is from a conference that she organised in Cologne. It was published in 2010, a few years after the conference. One of the reason I included it is because it’s less Anglophone-centric than the other books. Another reason is that it gives a good representation of the variety of ways to approach animals in history. That’s a big question. I recently heard a short answer on the radio which referenced the way that the Nazis demonised people by calling them cockroaches, vermin and other pests. The Nazis were one of the most effective deployers of this type of rhetoric, but they were not unique in that. Referring to humans as animals is an easily available way to denigrate individuals and groups—and to create a sense of their difference—even though this type of rhetoric can sit side-by-side with affection for and appreciation of some kinds of animals. But if you want to denigrate someone you don’t call them a loyal dog; you call them something else. Just before my first book came out, I gave a couple of talks at Cornell. One was at the veterinary school, where of course I didn’t have to explain why I was focusing on animals. But I also gave another talk at the Cornell Society for Humanities. I was introduced by a literary critic, who said, ‘A lot of weird things have been coming out of the humanities lately, but this is the weirdest.’"