"Animal Encounters comprises a series of meetings not only between diverse beasts, but also between distinct disciplinary methods, theoretical approaches, and ethical positions. The essays here collected come together from literary and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, ecocriticism and art history, philosophy and feminism, science and technology studies, history and post-humanism, to study that most familiar and most foreign of creatures, 'the animal'. These encounters between leading practitioners in the field highlight the promise and potential of interspecies exchange and mutual provocation. "--Jacket.