---
title: "Animal studies"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_studies"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:57:30.835346+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Research topics and methodologies ==
Researchers in animal studies examine the questions and issues that arise when traditional modes of humanistic and scientific inquiry begin to take animals seriously as subjects of thought and activity. Students of animal studies may examine how humanity is defined in relation to animals, or how representations of animals create understandings (and misunderstandings) of other species. In fact, animals often elicit fear in humans. A well-known animal phobia is ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. People with animal phobias tend to negatively generalize animals, even species that are harmless.
In most movies, predatory animals such as sharks and wolves are usually the antagonists, but this only causes significant damage to their reputation and makes people fear what they think their true nature is. In order to do so, animal studies pays close attention to the ways that humans anthropomorphize animals, and asks how humans might avoid bias in observing other creatures. Anthropomorphized animals are frequently found in children's books and films. Researchers are analyzing the positive and negative effects of anthropomorphized animals on a child's view of the non-human species.  In addition, Donna Haraway's book, Primate Visions, examines how dioramas created for the American Museum of Natural History showed family groupings that conformed to the traditional human nuclear family, which misrepresented the animals' observed behavior in the wild. Critical approaches in animal studies have also considered representations of non-human animals in popular culture, including species diversity in animated films and fiction. By highlighting these issues, animal studies strives to re-examine traditional ethical, political, and epistemological categories in the context of a renewed attention to and respect for animal life. The assumption that focusing on animals might clarify human knowledge is neatly expressed in Claude Lévi-Strauss's famous dictum that animals are "good to think."

== See also ==
Intersectionality
Anthrozoology (human–animal studies)
Animality studies
Critical animal studies
Ecocriticism
Ecosophy

== References ==

== Bibliography ==
Bjorkdahl, Kristian, and Alex Parrish (2017) Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion. Lantham: Lexington Press. ISBM 9781498558457.
Boehrer, Bruce, editor, A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, Berg, 2009, ISBN 9781845203955.
Boggs, Colleen Glenney (2013). Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-16122-0.
Burt, Jonathan, editor (2013), "Animal" series, Reaktion Books.
De Ornellas, Kevin (2014). The Horse in early modern English Culture, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, ISBN 978-1-61147-658-3.
Derrida, Jacques (2008). The animal that therefore I am. New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-2791-4.
Haraway, Donna J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-5046-0.
Kalof, Linda (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.  ISBN 9780199927142.
Pick, Anat (2011). Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York City: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14787-3.
Ritvo, Harriet (2010). Noble cows and hybrid zebras: essays on animals and history. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3060-2.
Salisbury, Joyce E. (2010). The Beast Within. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-78095-7.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (1984). Dominance and affection: the making of pets. New Haven: Yale Univ Press. ISBN 0-300-10208-9.
Waldau, Paul (2013). Animal Studies: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-982701-5.
Wolfe, Cary (2003). Zoontologies: the question of the animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-4106-4.

== External links ==
Animal Studies Journal
Animal Rights History
Animal Studies and Film: An interview with Matthew Brower, professor of graduate Art History at York University
Animal Studies Online Bibliography
Animals and the Law
Australian Animal Studies Group
Italian Animal Studies Review
Animal Studies at Michigan State University