Join NYU's Department of Sociology, Environmental Studies Program and the Institute for Public Knowledge in celebrating the publication of Colin Jerolmack's The Global Pigeon.  The author will be joined in a discussion of the book by NYU Professor of Sociology and Social and Cultural Analysis Harvey Molotch.

The pigeon is the quintessential city bird. Domesticated thousands of years ago as a messenger and a source of food, its presence on our sidewalks is so common that people consider the bird a nuisance--if they notice it at all. Yet pigeons are also kept for pleasure, sport, and profit by people all over the world, from the "pigeon wars" waged by breeding enthusiasts in the skies over Brooklyn to the Million Dollar Pigeon Race held every year in South Africa.

Drawing on more than three years of fieldwork across three continents, Colin Jerolmack traces our complex and often contradictory relationship with these versatile animals in public spaces such as Venice's Piazza San Marco and London's Trafalgar Square and in working-class and immigrant communities of pigeon breeders in New York and Berlin. By exploring what he calls "the social experience of animals," Jerolmack shows how our interactions with pigeons offer surprising insights into city life, community, culture, and politics.

Colin Jerolmack is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at New York University.  Jerolmack also teaches in NYU's newly created Animal Studies Initiative. Jerolmack received his PhD in sociology from the City University of New York, then was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Fellowship at Harvard University.  His interests include Community and Urban Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Human-animal Relations, Culture, Health, and Ethnography.