An emerging interdisciplinary field of study focused on animal—human relations and interactions broadly understood. The ‘animal turn’, as it is sometimes referred to, involves the ethical reflection upon non-human animals, across disciplines, in contrast to the anthropocentric focus of the humanities. Drawn from philosophy, animal studies has grown to encompass work in the social sciences and the humanities. Peter Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation, which argues for veganism and against the ‘speciesism’ of privileging humans over animals, is usually viewed as the foundational text in the field. But it was really John Berger’s 1977 essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’ that set the tone for the field of animal studies essays by arguing that today we live ‘without animals’, that they are either invisible or the source of spectacle. Also important is Derrida, Jacques’s 1997 lecture ‘The Animal that Therefore I Am’, which focuses on interactions between humans, animals, and language. By overturning the preoccupation with the human, animal studies challenges us to rethink many questions central to humanities and social sciences. While the parameters of study remain fluid, animal studies is a field of exponential growth, with several scholarly journals and numerous book series devoted to its research. Annales School A loosely-knit group of French historians associated with the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, which was first published in 1929. Founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, a sixteenth-century specialist and medievalist respectively, the journal was intended to promote a new kind of history that would shift the focus of historiography from narrative to analysis, and in doing so give attention to the full range of human activities, making space for collaboration with other disciplines (geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics and economics) in order to produce what would come to be called ‘total history’. It dismissed narrowly empirical approaches to history, or what it called histoire évenementielle (factual history), in favour of a much broader approach, which came to be codified by Braudel, Fernand as the three-tiered model, generally known by the first of its levels the longue durée, which refers to human interaction with the physical environment and a timescale almost imperceptible to the human eye. It addressed itself to ‘problems’ in history---for example, Febvre’s Le Problème de l’incroyance au 16e siècle: la religion de Rabelais (1942), translated as The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century (1983), attempted to explain why ‘unbelief’ was impossible in the sixteenth century. From its rebellious and small beginning, the Annales School rapidly rose to a position of hegemony in the French academy, expanding enough to fracture back into small rebellious factions all over again. It is customary to treat the history of the Annales School in terms of generations: the first generation was Bloch and Febvre, but Bloch who was active in the Resistance during World War II was executed by the Gestapo in 1944, so it was left to Febvre to keep the movement going; the second generation was dominated by the towering figure of Febvre’s student, Braudel; the third generation was led by Braudel’s students Jacques Le Goff, Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie, and Marc Ferro. Although never part of the Annales School, historians like Certeau, Michel de, Foucault, Michel and Lefebvre, Henri were also influenced by its approach to history. Further Reading: P. Burke The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929—89 (1990).