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Animal Studies in Sociology

In addition to course development in animal studies, Sociology Professor Linda Kalof has been writing about the human-animal relationship for almost a decade, primarily in the area of animal imagery in popular culture, human attitudes toward animals, conservation and biodiversity. She has published The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings (with Amy Fitzgerald). This annotated anthology is the first general, multidisciplinary overview of the contemporary and classic writings in animal studies. She has also published Looking at Animals in Human History, an historical survey of the cultural representations of animals from prehistory to postmodernity that documents how those representations have changed with changing social conditions. In addition, Kalof is one of the general editors of the multi-volume book series published in 2007 by Berg, A Cultural History of Animals, which includes her edited volume on Animals in Antiquity (with contributions from some of the most established animal studies scholars in the western world).

Kalof's former doctoral student, Amy Fitzgerald (now an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Windsor ) also studies human-animal relationships. Based on a multivariate analysis of 10 year panel data, her recently completed dissertation substantiates the claim that there is something unique and pernicious about the effects of slaughterhouses on the surrounding community's well-being, a notion popularized more than 100 years ago by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle . Fitzgerald has also published a book based on her master's thesis, Animal Abuse and Family Violence, a qualitative study of the connection between domestic violence and the abuse of family pets.