Animal Lives through Five Centuries of Art and Science

Animal Lives through Five Centuries of Art and Science confronts a deep paradox: humanity's greatest achievements in art, science, and philosophy have often relied on the systematic subjugation of animals. This pioneering interdisciplinary work traces how Western knowledge systems have turned animal suffering into spectacle and commodity, from Renaissance anatomy theaters where Leonardo da Vinci painted ermines as symbols of purity while their real-world counterparts were skinned for aristocratic fashion, to today's genetically engineered GloFish. Through six compelling case studies—including the extinction of the quagga, Victorian vivisection debates, and industrial farming—Ruth Y.Y. Hung shows how the same imagination fueling cultural progress has also been used to justify domination. Drawing on thinkers from Erich Auerbach to Donna Haraway, the book offers a radical rethinking of knowledge itself. It reveals that animals have only been understood through frameworks that either aestheticize or erase their lives. Yet, amid these histories of violence, moments of resistance appear: the defiant stare of a vivisected dog, Indigenous cosmologies honoring ecological kinship, and Buddhist deer challenging human-centered views. Hung advocates for "interspecies reimagination," urging a shift from extraction to reciprocity, and calls on readers to develop a new ethics where knowledge serves rather than controls life.

Ruth Y.Y. Hung is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is also a Senior Fellow at Advance HE, a member of the International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE), and holds editorial roles at the American Journal of Art and Design and boundary 2. Her research includes world literature, modern criticism, and animal studies. Notably, she authored the first English-language critical biography of the Chinese intellectual Hu Feng, titled, Hu Feng: A Marxist Intellectual in a Communist State, 1930-1955 (2020).