The way in which humans articulate identities, social hierarchies, and their inversions through relations with animals has been a fruitful topic in anthropological and historical investigations for years. This book calls attention to the symbolic meanings of animals, and is concerned with the material and bodily aspects of animal-human relations.

As studies of nonhuman primates threaten to compromise the long-held assumption that only humans possess self-awareness. The question becomes: How can one firmly differentiate human beings from other animals? The contributors include Piers Beirne, Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Mary E. Fissell, Paul H. Freedman, Ruth Mazo Karras, Susan E. Lederer, Rob Meens, John H. Murrin, James A. Serpell, and H. Peter Steeves. Angela N. H. Creager and William Chester Jordan are associates of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University.

Eating animals in the early Middle Ages - classifying the animal world and building group identities
the representation of medieval peasants as bestial and as human
separating the men from the goats - masculinity, civilization and identity formation in the medieval university
imagining vermin in early modern England
"Things Fearful to Name" - bestiality in early America
gaurdian spirits or demonic pets - the concept of the witch's familiar in early modern England, 1530-1712
on the sexual assault of animals - a sociological view
the familiar other and feral selves - life at the human/animal boundary
the founders of ethology and the problem of human aggression - a study in ethology's ecologies
animal parts/human bodies - organic transplantation in early-20th-century America.