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This thesis begins with the claim that the most productive and stimulating manner of addressing the question of the animal is through an engagement with the writings of Jacques Derrida. In particular, it picks up on his comment in The Animal that Therefore I Am that “thinking concerning the animal, if there is such a thing, derives from poetry.” As such, the thesis explores the specific ways in which the resources of literature can be used in order to address what is possibly the most pressing ethical task of modern humanity. One of the central questions of the thesis concerns how what Derrida calls carnophallogocentrism can be confronted by literature. Through readings of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and the poetry and short stories of D.H. Lawrence, I explore how literature is uniquely placed to offer a sense of the radical otherness of nonhuman animals. In perhaps a contradictory manner, I also examine how literary resources can be used to evoke a sense of pity for nonhumans. There are two further important, and connected, areas of enquiry. The first relates to the position of man who is constructed in opposition to nonhuman animals and is given the right to put nonhumans to death. As such, I study how a variety of texts, chiefly J.M. Coetzee's Foe and Philip Roth's American Pastoral, reveal the fragility of some of the chief notions of humanism and give way to what has been theorised as posthumanism. The second engages with what Derrida calls “eating well.” This is a question which receives its most thorough investigation through a reading of Margaret Atwood's dystopian Maddaddam trilogy.

The principal aim of this study is to investigate the role rare and exotic animals played in the cultural self-fashioning and political imaging of the Medici's Ducal and Grand-ducal Court in Florence (1531-1737). The exclusive focus on this topic will contribute to Medicean scholarship in an area of research that has hitherto received only scant and fragmentary attention. This study will provide the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of the numerous ways in which both real and depicted animals were manipulated to serve the interests of the Medici regime. The thesis is formed of five chapters. Chapter one examines the zoological spaces established by the Medici; chapter two focuses on the procurement of animals and their use in diplomatic gift exchange. The remainder of the thesis takes the form of three case studies. These will examine a wide range of Medici-commissioned works of art, from different points in the family's history, in which unusual fauna feature as a central element of the iconography. The works discussed will make clear how individual members of the regime deployed animal imagery to express their political aspirations and courtly magnificence. Case study one traces how early members of the Medici family used images of rare beasts to assert their dynastic and political legitimacy, primarily to a home audience. Case study two examines the role of zoological illustrations in the Medici's wider ambition to establish an international reputation as patrons of the natural sciences and to promote the court as a centre of artistic production. The final case considers a series of zoological paintings commissioned by the last two Medici rulers, to argue that the pictures reflected not only the shifting values elite society attached to unusual fauna, but that they also mirrored the decline of the regime itself.

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Sharks are an objectively diverse group of animals; ranging in maximum size from 2,000cm (whale shark) to 17cm (dwarf lantern shark); occupying habitats that are periodically terrestrial (epaulette shark) to the deepest parts of the ocean (frilled shark); relying on a diversity of diets from plankton to marine mammals; with vast amounts of morphology diversity such as the laterally expanded heads of hammerhead species, the elongate caudal fins of thresher species, and the tooth embedded rostrum of saw shark species representing some of the anatomical extremes. Yet despite these obvious differences in morphology, physiology, and ecology, the challenges associated with studying hard to access, large bodied, pelagic animals have limited our comparative understanding of form and function as it relates to swimming within this group. The majority of shark swimming studies examine species that succeed in captivity, which are usually benthic associated sharks that spend time resting on the substrate. These studies have also been limited by the use of flumes, in which the unidirectional flow and small working area precludes the analysis of larger animals, volitional swimming, and maneuvering. The few existing volitional kinematics studies on sharks quantify two-dimensional kinematics which are unable to capture movements not observable in the plane of reference. With this study, we quantified the volitional swimming kinematics of sharks in relation to morphological, physiological, and ecological variation among species. We developed a technique to analyze three-dimensional (3D) kinematics in a semi-natural, large volume environment, which, to our knowledge, provides the first3D analysis of volitional maneuvering in sharks. We demonstrated that Pacific spiny dogfish and bonnethead sharks rotate the pectoral fins substantially during yaw (horizontal) maneuvering and is correlated with turning performance. We proposed that ecomorphological differences correlate with the varied maneuvering strategies we observed between the two species. We also found that there is some mechanical constraint on shark pectoral fin shape that is explained by phylogenetic relationships but describe a continuum of morphological variables within that range. We propose standardized terminology and methodology for the future assessment of shark pectoral fin morphology and function. As with previous studies, the ease of access to species was a challenge in this study and future studies should continue to assess the functional ecomorphology of shark pectoral fins among species. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Jeffrey B. Rosen, Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references.

Graduation date: 1985 / Best scan available for tables. The original is a blurry photocopy.