West with Giraffes Roundtable
When
Lynda Rutledge’s West with Giraffes tracks the unlikely journey of a Dust Bowl refugee, a hardened zoologist, a woman photojournalist, and two giraffes from a hurricane-racked New York to a welcoming San Diego zoo. On the road, friendships are formed, deepened, and dissolved.
Three invited panelists, Neil M. Maher, Randy Malamud, and John Marsh, will consider the context of the Great Depression, the environmental impact of the Dust Bowl, and the ethics of zoos.
Featured Panelists:
Neil M. Maher is a Professor of History and Master Teacher in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius and Nature’s New Deal and has written essays and Op-Eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Maher’s scholarship and teaching explore how the natural environment has mediated power relationships between people over time. He is currently working on his third book, which is tentatively titled Wasted: An Environmental Justice History of Newark, New Jersey.
Randy Malamud is Regents' Professor of English at Georgia State University. His specializations are in modern literature, cultural studies, and ecocriticism. He has a particular interest in animal studies and anthrozoology. Malamud has written several books on human-animal relations, including Reading Zoos, Representations of Animals and Captivity; Poetic Animals and Animal Souls; A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age; and An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture.
John Marsh is Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and is the director of the Center for American Literary Studies. His scholarship and teaching focus on modern and contemporary poetry, nineteenth-century American poetry, the 1930s, and the economics, philosophy, and literature of inequality. Marsh has written several books, including The Emotional Life of the Great Depression (2019), which tells the story of the Great Depression through its paradigmatic emotions: despair, anger, sympathy, righteousness, panic, fear, awe, love, and hope. His most recent book, A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and 100 Years of the Great Gatsby, was published in late 2024.