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Poultry Science,
Chicken Culture
Price (cloth): $39.95
Price (paper): $25.95
Subtitle: A Partial Alphabet
Author: Susan Merrill Squier
Subject: American
Studies, Literary Studies
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5421-1
Pages:
296 pages
Publication Date: November 2012
Winner of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts 2011 Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize
Praise:
“A quirky mash of essays on chickens and the interplay of biology and culture that manages to blend all of Squier’s interdisciplinary interest. She ranges freely, from takes on chickens as subjects of photography and exhibition, playwriting, film, and children’s and other literature, to musings on such public-policy issues as risk management, the avian-flu scare, and the societal costs of industrial agriculture.”
—Chronicle Review, 1/28/11
"Squier offers a delightful, provocative,
and unexpected look into the visible, and often hidden,
interrelationships that bind human and fowl."
—Gregg Mittman, author of Reel Nature: America's Romance with
Wildlife on Film
"This vividly written transdisciplinary book is full of proof
that chickens are good to think with, good to live with, good to
inhabit thick histories with. Squier's "partial alphabet" invites human
beings and chickens to reintroduce themselves in practices of love and
care in art, science, domesticity, farming, and more."
—Donna J. Haraway, author
of When Species Meet
(University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
Description:
Poultry Science, Chicken
Culture is a collection of engrossing, witty, and
thought-provoking essays about the chicken—the familiar domestic bird
that has played an intimate part in our cultural, scientific, social,
economic, legal, and medical practices and concerns since ancient
Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Organized as a primer, the book reaches beyond
narrow disciplines to discover why individuals are so fascinated with
the humble, funny, overlooked, and omnipresent chicken.
Spanning fascinating and diverse fields, Susan Merrill Squier assesses
the chicken as the focus of film, photography, and visual art in many
media; details some of the roles played by chickens and eggs in the
development of embryology, biology, and regenerative medicine; traces
the iconic figure of the chicken (and the chicken thief) in political
discourse during the 2008 presidential election; demonstrates the types
of knowledge that have been lost as food production moved from
small-scale farming to industrial agriculture; investigates the
connection between women and chickens; analyzes the fears and risks
behind the panic around avian flu; and scrutinizes the role of chicken
farming in international development. A combination of personal
passion and surprising scholarly information, Poultry Science, Chicken Culture
will change forever the way you think about chickens.
About the Author:
SUSAN MERRILL SQUIER is Julia Gregg
Brill Professor of Women’s Studies, English, and STS at Penn State
University and author or editor of seven books, including Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century
Visions of Reproductive Technology (Rutgers University Press) and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine.
Her research takes her from her own backyard where she raises chickens
to scholarly trips throughout the United States and Europe.
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Price (paper): $25.95
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