Names have meaning and implications; words can improve or diminish our world and our sense of how we fit in this world. Let's use the occasion of this groundswell against the most egregiously offensive team name as a moment to look at all the ways we can more intelligently envision ourselves and our proper place among all the other creatures.
Randy Malamud is Regents' Professor of English and chair of the department at Georgia State University. He is the author of 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.
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