Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times

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AuthorAntoinette Burton
PublisherDuke University Press
PublishedOct 24 2020
Book FormatPaperback
ISBN-139781478011286
Dimensions9.02 X 5.98 X 0.53 inches
Weight 0.75 pounds
BISAC
CategoriesHistory > World - General
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to Animalia analyze twenty-six animals--domestic, feral, predatory, and mythical--whose relationship to imperial authorities and settler colonists reveals how the presumed racial supremacy of Europeans underwrote the history of Western imperialism. Victorian imperial authorities, adventurers, and colonists used animals as companions, military transportation, agricultural laborers, food sources, and status symbols. They also overhunted and destroyed ecosystems, laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as climate change. At the same time, animals such as lions, tigers, and mosquitoes interfered in the empire's racial, gendered, and political aspirations by challenging the imperial project's sense of inevitability. Unconventional and innovative in form and approach, Animalia invites new ways to consider the consequences of imperial power by demonstrating how the politics of empire--in its racial, gendered, and sexualized forms--played out in multispecies relations across jurisdictions under British imperial control.

Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Peter Hansen, Isabel Hofmeyr, Anna Jacobs, Daniel Heath Justice, Dane Kennedy, Jagjeet Lally, Krista Maglen, Amy E. Martin, Renisa Mawani, Heidi J. Nast, Michael A. Osborne, Harriet Ritvo, George Robb, Jonathan Saha, Sandra Swart, Angela Thompsell

Author Bio

I’m a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire, with a specialty in colonial India and an ongoing interest in Australasia and Africa. I’ve written on topics ranging from feminism and colonialism to the relationship of empire to the nation and the world. Women, gender and sexuality have always been central to my research, much of which has been concerned with the role of Indian women in the imperial and postcolonial imagination. I’ve edited collections about politics, mobility, postcolonialism and empire and have frequently collaborated with Tony Ballantyne.

At Illinois I have taught courses on modern British history and imperialism, gender and colonialism, autobiography and the archive, approaches and methods and world history. I am currently working on a Bloomsbury series on the cultures of western imperialism and a Duke University Press series on history teaching.

I am currently the director of the campus humanities center, The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. I am also the Principal Investigator for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities Without Walls.

Research Interests

Modern Britain and empire; colonial India; women, gender and feminism; postcolonial studies; world history

Education

B.A. Yale University, 1983
M.A. University of Chicago, 1984
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1990

Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign