Reading Cats and Dogs

Françoise Besson is emerita professor at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. Zelia M. Bora is founder of the Commission for Animal Welfare at the Federal University of Paraíba and contributes to the Post-Graduate Program at the Federal University of Paraíba. Marianne Marroum is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Scott Slovic is university distinguished professor of environmental humanities at the University of Idaho.

Table of Contents

Prologue by Kev Reynolds

Introduction by Françoise Besson and Scott Slovic

Section I: Stray and Feral Companions



Karla Armbruster, “Our Feral Future: Dog Stories and the Anthropocene”
Önder Cetin, “When You Love the Stray Animals as Much as Your Own Pets: The Case of Companion Animals in Turkey”
Marianne Marroum, “Identity, Love, and Abuse in Laila al-Othman’s Cat Stories”
Lorraine Kerslake, “Of Mice, Rabbits, and Other Companions in Beatrix Potter’s More than Human World”
Niroshima Gunasekera, “Walking Through the Animal Kingdom: A Search for the Near and Dear”
Qianqian Cheng, “From the Forbidden City to the Locked-down Megalopolis: Reading the Behaviors of Cat Lovers in China”

Section II: The Usefulness of Companion Animals



Anna Re, “Memorable Dogs of Italian Literature”
Claire Cazejous-Augé, “Cross-species Cooperation: Hunting with Dogs in Contemporary American Nature Writing”
Keita Hatooka, “Let the Sleeping Dogs Tell Lies: Companionship and Solitude in Shuntarō Tanikawa’s Dog Poems”
Kenneth Toah Nsah, “Of Dogs, Horses, and Buffalos in Cameroon: Companion Animals in Cameroonian Fiction”

Section III: Problematizing Companion Animals



Chen Hong, “The Plight of Dogs in the Country-City Gap: Reading Chinese Dog Narratives across Genres”
Wendy Woodward, “Cat Killers, Black Diamonds, and a Talking Cat: Feline Companions in Post-Transitional South African Fiction”
Zélia M. Bora, “The Paradoxical World of Animal Representation in the Brazilian Novel As Horas Nuas in Light of Greek Philosophy”
Athane Adrahane, “Canine Initiation into Ecowisdom”

Epilogue by Françoise Besson, Zélia M. Bora, Marianne Marroum, and Scott Slovic

Index