Critical Terms for Animal Studies

**An essential primer and handbook for students and scholars in Animal Studies** Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies to explore these multi-faceted relationships in order to help us understand the ways in which other animals figure in our lives and we in theirs. Bringing together the work of a group of internationally distinguished scholars, the contribution in *Critical Terms for Animal Studies* offers distinct voices and diverse perspectives, exploring significant concepts and asking important questions. How do we take non-human animals seriously, not simply as metaphors for human endeavors, but as subjects themselves? What do we mean by *anthropocentrism*, *captivity*, *empathy*, *sanctuary*, and *vulnerability*, and what work do these and other critical terms do in Animal Studies? An indispensable reference for the field, *Critical Terms for Animal Studies* not only provides a framework for thinking about animals as subjects of their own experiences, but also serves as a touchstone to help us think differently about our conceptions of what it means to be human, and the impact human activities have on the more than human world.