'what counts as natural history, Adam Dodd reminds us, is dynamic and contextual - so there is more to the popular nineteenth-century accounts of insects generated by L.M. Budgen than might first appear to a modern reader. In the representational conventions of these stories, Dodd foinds the origins of common anthropomorphic portrayals of insects  - but also, a different mode of knowledge making, one that Budgen saw herself as creating with, rather than transplanting onto, animals. Budgen's insect books... navigated complex boundaries between subjective engagement with and objective distancing from nature - and from them, as with all popular natural history, their contemporary audiences drew moral and allegorical truths. To the extent that we can see these insect stories as constituting, rather than constructing, a "lifeworld"... Dodd susggests we can resist static "mechanomorphic" interpretations of animal-human relations. Perhaps above all, Budgen's unique authorial mode encourages, and allows, imaginative and fruitful interactions with living insects, beyond the pages of the book.' (9)

'Brian Ogilvie axamines how art and science intersected around very small animals - insects - in the eighteenth century. Early modern and Enlightenment studies of insects faced the challenge of making animals visible in a unique way, since their subjects are often too small to be seen, or seen well, with the unassisted eye. This meant that standardized forms of magnification - through the lens and on the page - were necessary for the production of authentic portrayals. These methods did not develop overnight, but rather emerged over time; indeed, they are still developing, and continue to marry aesthetic concerns with pragmatic requirements... The [enlightenment] need to establish some validity for the study of insects inspired strikingly detailed illuatration, a practive that began to gain considerable momentum during the eighteenth century with images as beautiful as they were accurate. August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, the central figure of Ogilvie's essay, emerges during this time as a significant proponent of not just what would later be labeled as the science of entomology, but what might be called an insect aesthetic. We find here an exemplary case of art, science, and theology converging not only in the animal, but also in its "world." The aesthetics of butterflies and beetles that Rösel developed simultaneously authenticated the "lifeworlds" of the insects he observed and the methods used to observe them. Insects were to be understood (and portrayed) both as specimens detached from their unfamiliar, subvisible "world," and as emblematic of that world itself, which was becoming increasingly accessible to those with the technology and natural history skills required to explore and document it.' (7-8)

Dodd et. al. describe Brenna's article as follows:

'Moving into the nineteenth century, Brita Brenna turns attention to the emergence of the glass case (or vitrine) and its impact on the preservation, display, and reception of museum objects - including taxidermied animals. Her primary focus is on how the localized collection and display practices of a relatively small and unknown natural history museum signified wider ambitions of universalized methods - a turn-of-the-century instance of "thinking globally, acting locally," as it were. Bergen Museum, on the western coast of Norway, was eager to participate in the burgeoning museum scene of the late nineteenth century, perhaps most illustriously exemplified in Europe by the British Museum (Natural History)... Brenna emphasises the general importance of glass for allowing diplays of rare and valuable objects in full view of the public without the direct assistance or instruction of museum staff. Often, however, any specific stuffed animal behind or within glass, while visually arresting, was envisioned by museum curators as merely an illustration of the accompanying authoritative text explaining its taxonomy, habits, habitat, and so on. Although Brenna foregrounds the historical example of Bergen Museum, her essay operates against a more nebulous backdrop, in which the subtle intangibility of glass, and its profound effects on how we look (through it) at objects and things, shapes a modern visual culture and its complex, problematic inclusion of the animal subject'. (6)

'Guro Flinterud documents how an older form of animal-human relations, that beween a zookeeper and his or her animal charges, has been transformed by new media - specifically, the Internet. The polar bear Knut, born in 2006 at the Berlin Zoo and abandoned by his mother, was intially presented to the world as a seemingly endless stream of images: the cute cub, being hand-reared by a human (male) caregiver. Within this context, Flinterud examines how Knut was transformed in cyberspace through the narratives of blogging. Interactions between Knut (now represented as a blogger himself) and his online fan community (who constructed themselves around this mythical animal representation) made explicit the contradictory cultural values and opinions connected to the polar bear in the early twenty-first century. Such attention, ultimately, was not enough to save Knut - he died at the age of four, collapsing into a pool of water in his enclosure, surrounded by zoo visitors, and within forty-eight hours, amateur video of his death appeared online. That this particular animal mattered - to many humans - seemed never to be in question. But Flinterud's analysis... encourages us to tend better to how animal representations both shape and connect us to the living, breathing, thinking animals behind such representations - that is, to the very matter of the animal itself.' (10)

'Few material practices have changed both natural history and animal-human "lifeworlds" more than exploration, so accordingly, Henry McGhie turns to a case study of one particular animal - Ross's Gull - to demonstrate these important historical shifts. McGhie considers the problem of what counted as knowledge of this rare bird - was it enough to see a well-preserved specimen in a museum drawer, or was it necessary to travel to the Arctic and encounter the animal in its natural environment? McGhie shows how the debate around the scientific naming of animals reflected new modes of engagement: that this bird was later referred to by association with its discoverer, the quintissential Polar explorer James Ross, rather than by its physical characteristics (such as its trademark rosy breast), pointed to different fields of acivity in which particular animals retained (or, in some cases, lost) their global "reputation." Ross's Gull, McGhie concludes, provides a powerful example of how scientific and cultural practices collaborate to transform animals from complex, multiple creatures into standardized, singular idealizations.' (8)

Dodd et. al describe Ruud's article as follows:

'Lise Camilla Ruud opens the volume with an examination of how six preserved monstrous pigs became objects of value and exchange in the museum culture of eighteenth-century Spain... Ruud shows that the [enlightenment] emphasis on monstrous difference ultimately erved an overarching agenda that stressed the conformity of nature to an overarching plan. But the monstrous pigs did more than this; they also became commodities, gifts, and gestures, elevating the social status of their donors and recipients, many of whom were eager to associate themselves with the prestigious world of institutionalized natural history. Each of Ruud's pigs has its own story, and each is an explicitly unique individual. Yet, taken together, they can be seen as the unlikely cast of a particular chapter of eighteenth-century Spanish history: dead and preserved in glass jars, yet instrumental in a nexus of human relationships, and indeed reverberating with other treatments of animal monstrosity throughout Enlightenment Europe.' (5-6)

'Liv Emma Thorsen confronts the fact and artefact of Barry, the most famous Saint Bernard rescue dog. Thorsen finds the stuffed Barry, on display in the Natural History Museum of Bern sunce 1814, to be materially emblematic of the "Barrylore" surrounding the animal. Thorsen shows how, through the practice of taxidermy, the natural and cultural history of the Saint Bernard interesected - and in turn, how this museum specimen came to represent both the iconic "faithful dog" and the representative type of its breed. Literally disembodied, with the skull and skin of "the real" Barry now housed in different parts of the museum, Barry's display nevertheless retains an aura of authenticity. Because (rather than in spite) of how this animal (now behind glass) materializes the imagined Saint Bernard, it continues to inspire modern natural history museum visitors.' (8-9)

'Nigel Rothfels takes up the various material and interpretive problems inherent in preserving animals through an exploration of the work of Carl Akeley. Akeley - widely regarded as one of the most accomplished taxidermists of all time, with numerous works housed and displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York - was working at the turn of the nineteenth century, a time when the human impact on the prosperity and indeed survival of many nonhuman animals was beginning to become apparent. Rothfels engages directly with the central paradox of Akeley: motivated by the desire to prevent many of the most majestic species of mammals from going extinct, Akeley undertook to hunt, kill, and stuff them for the benefit of science and the general information of the public. Unlike numerous contemporary hunters, for whom displays of bravado, conquest, and the thrill of the chase were almost all consuming, Akeley was mournful of the steady disappearance of animals, suggesting a particular context for his taxidermy. Akeley's stuffed animals are not so much evidence of domination and defeat (i.e. trophies), but rather can be read as poignant signs of the fragility of the species embodied by the particular specimens displayed. Rothfels shows how, in particular, an informed reading of Akeley's memoir can shed further light on his taxidermy - reminding us that the "meaning" of the animal (or its effigy) is always shaped by a diversity of contingent factors, and that in some cases, relationships that form between humans and animals may constitute legitimate paradoxes that cannor be easily or perhaps ever) resolved. (6-7)