Welcome to the eBestiary.  This site grew out of the work that students and faculty did during spring quarter of 2012 in the interdisciplinary Evergreen academic program Animal Others in Image and Text.

Each of us chose an animal to observe over a six week time period.  Parameters of this assignment included a requirement that each person choose an individual animal or specific group of animals (for example, one chicken in particular, or a particular group of animals that frequent a particular location).  To stretch us outside our comfort zones, we agreed to choose animal(s) that were not members of our own individual households (we could observe a companion animal, but not our own companion animal).

Additional parts of the assignment called for research into visual, cultural and natural histories of the animals.  In other work, students designed characters based on their animals, animated short sequences, and explored several modes of nonfiction writing that made use of their observations and research.  Students compiled their writing, observations, drawings, images and research into spiral bound “Animal Books”, and then selected elements from those for their posts.

We’d like to thank Evergreen faculty emerita Marilyn Frasca for the initial inspiration to do close studies of individual animals, and Academic Computing staff Amy Greene for so generously helping students and faculty construct this site with her ideas and technical expertise.