"The putative mission of zoos - education and conservation - yield doubtful results, education because its information relies on description and exposition instead of narrative, conservation because only a few large, showy vertebrates receive the most effort. By controlling reproduction and restricting evolution, zoos reduce animals to artifacts - unattached ecological fragments - and ultimately revoke their ontological status as part of the natural world." "Spotte's argument assumes manifestations that impinge on contemporary theories of art, film, literature, photography, and science, the whole anchored securely by the twin poles of semiotics and simulation. This willingness to grapple with high-level theory - and to take intellectual risks - sets Zoos in Postmodernism apart from other treatments of zoos in contemporary western literature."--BOOK JACKET.

Despite hundreds of millions of visitors each year, zoos have remained outside of the realm of philosophical analysis. This lack of theoretical examination is interesting considering the paradoxical position within which a zoo is situated, being a space of animal confinement as well as a site that provides valuable tools for species conservation, public education, and entertainment. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? argues that the zoo is a legitimate space of academic inquiry. The modes of communication taking place at the zoo that keep drawing us back time and time again beg for a careful investigation. In this book, the meaning of the zoo as communicative space is explored. This book relies on the phenomenological method from Edmund Husserl and a rhetorical approach to examine the interaction between people and animals in the zoo space. Phenomenology, the philosophy of examining the engaged everyday lived experience, is a natural method to use in the project. Despite its rich history and tradition it is interesting that there are very few books explaining “how to do” phenomenology. Why Do We Go to the Zoo? provides a detailed account of how to actually conduct a phenomenological analysis. The author spent thousands of hours in zoos watching people and animals interact as well as talking with people both formally and informally. This book asks readers to bracket their preconceptions of what goes on in the zoo and, instead, to explore the meaning of powerful zoo experiences while reminding us of the troubled history of zoos.

Political Animals offers a unique study and perspective on the relationship between politics and the art found in American zoos and aquariums. Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump examine the ways that zoos and aquariums have successfully served as sculptural gardens for the masses and have incorporated art and architecture that convey political messages about both the patrons and the animals. This book demonstrates how art has been used for a range of economic and political purposes including providing jobs, a medium to reach out to minority interest groups, a fundraising tool, and a surrogate for the animals themselves. Donahue and Trump skillfully analyze and compare zoos to other areas of public art to highlight the calculated strategies on the part of the zoos that have incorporated a range of artistic styles for different audiences. Incorporating photographs of zoo and aquarium art from around the country, Political Animals is an exciting and captivating text for the mind and eye.

"Themed spaces have, at their foundation, an overarching narrative, symbolic complex, or story that drives the overall context of their spaces. Theming, in some very unique ways, has expanded beyond previous stereotypes and oversimplifications of culture and place to now consider new and often controversial topics, themes, and storylines."--Publisher's website.

Instead of summing up the various perspectives of scholars and the variety of ideas to which the term postmodernism has been assigned, this text lets this diversity speak for itself. By bringing together articles and essays on the impact of the postmodern temper on an eclectic range of subjects, Berger presents a few of the many ways different theorists have come to terms with postmodernism, while examining manifestations of postmodernism in the culture of everyday life.

U2’s ongoing popular appeal is constructed in the spaces between band and fan, commercialism and community, spirituality and nihilism; finding meaning in a surface-oriented popular culture and contradiction in the depths of political and faith-based institutions. The band’s long-term success and continued relevance is a result of their ability to hold these energies in tension without one subsuming the other—to live in the liminal space that such contradictions invite. U2’s mythic trajectory was born from a bygone electronic era, realized in our current digital era but with an eye on the forthcoming virtual era; it is a new myth for the whole world, found in the most unlikely of places, popular culture. This book approaches the band’s mythic trajectory through a combination of rhetorical analysis and autoethnographic explorations that unveil the more personal experiences most of us have with media. Drawing heavily upon the works of Marshal McLuhan, Joseph Campbell, Thomas S. Frentz, and Janice Hocker Rushing, Myth, Fan Culture, and the Popular Appeal of Liminality in the Music of U2 unpacks U2’s popular appeal through the lenses of Agape (spiritual, communal love), Amor (romantic love), and Eros (erotic love). Check out the book's official website for additional information: https//:www.u2mythos.com

Metamorphoses of the Zoo marshals a unique compendium of critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that cultivate humanity's biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These take the form of radical restructurings of what were formerly zoos or map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes to moral progress on the inter-species front and eco-psychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified or urbanizing.