Professor Brett Mizelle (HIST) Named Inside CSULB Author of the Month
The College of Liberal Arts congratulates Brett Mizelle, professor of History and Director of the American Studies Program, for being Inside CSULB’s Author of the Month. His book Pig (Reaktion Books, 2011) explores the long, complicated relationship between humans and pigs. Mizelle traces the natural and cultural history of the pig. He focuses on the contradictions between our imaginative representations of pigs and the real ways in which pigs are prized for their meat, used as subjects in medical research, and killed in order to make hundreds of consumer products. Mizelle explains, “My book’s fundamental argument is that humans have had a long shared history with pigs, a species that has been materially and symbolically significant in the making of human society and culture throughout the globe.”
Mizelle is the co-founder and editor of the H-Animal Discussion Network, an online home for the growing number of interdisciplinary scholars who are engaged in the study of animals in human culture. For more on pigs, see his “Wonderful Pig of Knowledge” blog.
Click here to read Richard Manly’s Inside CSULB piece about Mizelle’s book Pig.