“Ziggy”

Nigel Rothfels, “Ziggy”

Description

In this talk I present the story of Ziggy, an elephant who lived at the Brookfield Zoo and died in 1975, after having become a national cause célèbre.

Biography

I’m an historian of animals and culture. I received my BA in history from the University of Utah and my MA and PhD from Harvard University. I’m the author of a book about the origins of naturalistic exhibits in zoos, Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (2002), the editor of the multidisciplinary collection Representing Animals (2002), co-author, with Dick Blau, of a study of elephants and their keepers in a contemporary zoo, Elephant House (2015), and author of a forthcoming book about elephants and culture.  My current research focuses on German colonial activity in the South Pacific and a particular butterfly.