Animal Advocacy Documentaries in the Twenty-first Century

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by Claudia Alonso Recarte

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Documentary

Keywords

documentary, animals

Publishing date

2026 (September 01, 2026)

Publisher

Routledge

Collection

Routledge Advances in Film Studies

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 198 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-1-032-66135-3

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Book Presentation:
Animal Advocacy Documentaries in the Twenty-first Century is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the study of this subgenre.

The book explores how the plasticity of nonfiction film engages with nonhuman otherness and with the rhetorical discourses of advocates and activists, while simultaneously reaffirming its claims to truth. It examines how documentary mechanisms associated with form and content are deployed by filmmakers to represent nonhuman animals as subjects deserving of moral consideration, effectively seeking an ethical response from viewers. Rhetorical devices at the service of the documentary genre and animal ethics discourses come together in the formulation of narratives and aesthetics that reflect filmmakers’ awareness of the intertextual forces embodied by nonhuman animals in moving images.

Contributing to the fields of (Critical) Animal, Film, and Media Studies by defining and historicizing these films, the book situates their identity in the context of Western mythographies, politics of sight, the systemic practices of the animal-industrial complex, and contemporary self-reflexivity. It will appeal to academics, students, advocates, activists and people with an interest in nonfiction film, offering them an understanding of the historical and aesthetic place of animal advocacy documentaries, as well as a critical assessment of their limits and problematic interstices.

About the Author:
Claudia Alonso-Recarte is Associate Professor in the Department of English and German at the University of Valencia, Spain. She specializes in the field of (Critical) Animal Studies, with a particular interest in the representation of nonhuman animals in literature and film. She has published in leading academic journals, including Gender, Place & Culture, MELUS, Men and Masculinities, Journal for Critical Animals Studies, Atlantis and Studies in Theatre and Performance. She has served as principal investigator of two funded research projects on animal advocacy documentary film and is the founder and director of the research group Animals in Literary and Visual Cultures (CULIVIAN) at the University of Valencia.

See the publisher website: Routledge