New Book from Susan Nance: Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis

Dr. Susan Nance has co-edited and is an author in a new collection published by University of Washington Press: Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis. It includes research by eight authors who explore episodes in US history in which people put animals in crisis to ask why it was so difficult for people to prevent these crises and, when they came to recognize the crisis, impossible to change course.

from the jacket:

A multispecies history of the globalized United States, Bellwether Histories reveals how animals have been ensnared in colonialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction as human decisions created and perpetuated untenable and unequal interspecies relationships. The collection's authors explore how people misunderstood or ignored animal crises precipitated by habitat destruction and population declines, sudden dependence on human aid, shifts from freedom to captivity, or subjection to overextended management systems.

Chapters address a range of themes, including the links between antislavery and anti-animal-cruelty advocacy; how cattle, horse, and pig behavior shaped human life and technology; and the politics of caring for and trafficking wild animals. This volume interrogates the history of animal disposability and its ideological twin in US history, human exceptionalism—the anthropocentric myth that people could harm animals without harming themselves.

Today's mass extinctions and ecological breakdowns ensure deadly zoonotic pandemics and global warming will harass us far into the future. Bellwether Histories looks back at how animals have been warning us of our collective fate and asks why they were so seldom heard.