Animal histories often attempt to de-centre the human in their narratives. They show instead how the actions of non-human animals have made possible and frustrated human activities. They also show how definitions of what it means to be human have been premised on contrasts with the animal other. In both of these arguments, animal historians…
Month: July 2016
Monkey Business in Yangon Zoo
I’ve spent most of today trying to read a gossip column from 1928 that appeared in the Burmese language newspaper Thuriya. The column was a regular feature in the paper which ran from at least as early as 1915 and was written by a man going by the pseudonym ‘Town Mouse’. In this particular episode,…
Learning Burmese, Colonial Style
I have recently begun working my way through a book designed to teach English speakers written Burmese. But unlike the textbooks that I have previously used, this one is a little dated. It was published in 1894 and was written by Richard Fleming St. Andrew St. John, an English Orientalist, colonial official and translator of…
Colonizing Animals 