University Press Scholarship Online.

Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II

Publications Pages Publications Pages. Search my Subject Specializations: Civil War American History: Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. How We Live with Nature's Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species Kelsi Nagy and Phillip David Johnson II Abstract Trash Animals, a collection of essays by a wide range of environmental writers, examines relationships between humans and wildlife deemed filthy, feral, unwanted, problematic, invasive or worthless.


  • Beyond Academics: Preparation for College and for Life (The HomeScholars Coffee Break Book series 4)?
  • A Mans Integrity is a Womans Security;
  • Subscriber Login.
  • How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species.
  • .
  • ;

More Trash Animals, a collection of essays by a wide range of environmental writers, examines relationships between humans and wildlife deemed filthy, feral, unwanted, problematic, invasive or worthless. Jan 25, Lexidreams rated it it was ok Shelves: The introduction is a very well written social critique. However, it does not really match what follows.

Trash Animals

Most of the chapters are naturalist's personal accounts of their experiences with animals who have been deemed pests. In these chapters I was hoping to find more tips on coexistence and insights into how we come to physically divide up and share the world with other animals. But it did not quite go in that direction. For one thing, the book bases itself mainly in the USA and entirely in the W The introduction is a very well written social critique.

For one thing, the book bases itself mainly in the USA and entirely in the West. Multiple chapters had the writers showing respect for the 'trash' animals, but in the end they still drowned them in trash cans literally.

See a Problem?

The book does provide a couple insightful solutions for particular cases and a bit of humor see the chapter on the amusingly 'hardcore' pigeon movement of NYC but I wish it had delivered so much more. This is not an animal rights oriented book, though those interested in the field may gain something from it. For example, in one inexplicable paragraph in the second to last chapter, a writer discusses his desire to foster in his students a disgust for social norms which romanticize nature, seeing such ideologies and "speak for those who can't" organizations as uncritically brainwashing people.

He believes by actually taking his students to experience nature they will make up their own minds, but of course also within the context of him specifically wanting them to deal with self-defecating grasshoppers whose only major value he believes comes from dissection. Recognizing and encouraging in your students "a willingness to outcompete, kill, hunt, or otherwise violently engage with other living beings" would seem to go against the themes and likely audiences of the book, but I guess it was deemed as appropriate??? He ends his chapter by stating, "In reference to hunting, Thoreau wrote, 'We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane while his education has been sadly neglected.

Perhaps this chapter was included to provide an alternative perspective but if the book really meant itself as an attempt to critique and challenge the construction of animals as 'trash', I am flummoxed.

Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature's Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species

Unfortunately, multiple sections of this book seem to be another example of the ideology which finds that it's okay to take part in behavior which is under moral question as long as one speaks words of "honor" and "respect" while doing it. The book ends on an anthropocentric note, even as it seemingly attempts to encourage humans to act more morally towards animals, by implying that it is only humans who can act morally towards other beings or understand that they "ask something of them". It was just well bellow my expectations.

Oct 21, Kusaimamekirai rated it really liked it.

Trash Animals — University of Minnesota Press

I really enjoyed this compilation of essays about the animals in our lives many of us would rather forget. While most essays extol the virtues of animals such as the starling and the prairie dog, others acknowledge the menace of creatures such as cockroaches while still finding wonder in their existence. She received a Culture and Animals Foundation grant for her research on cattle in human culture. She lives and works in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Trash Animals complicates and muddies the lines we draw between the animals we love to love and those we despise. This book will be an invaluable, instructive, and entertaining resource for anyone interested in how we learn, or forget, to live with them. For anyone still under the misconception that nature writing is limited to celebrations of natural beauty and explorations of soothing pastoral landscapes, Trash Animals provides a refreshing alternative. The Symbolic Trash Animal 1. The Native Trash Animal 5. The Invasive Trash Animal 8.

UMP blog - Pigeons. Just what is a 'trash animal'? I am often asked this question when someone discovers that I am an editor of a collection of essays with a title of the same phrase. The phrase "trash animal" is used to describe many animals. No animals are trash.

Read the full article. Excerpts on the Orion blog.

When one's trash is another's. The new anthology Trash Animals considers our relationships with the wild and the unwelcome of the animal kingdom. Trash Animals signals a shift in mainstream culture.


  • ?
  • Top 10 Spanish Tapas. How to Cook Spanish Cuisine.
  • ?
  • The Soup Book!

University of Minnesota Press Coming soon.