American beasts : perspectives on animals, animality and U.S. culture, 1776-1920 / Dominik Ohrem (ed.).

Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Berlin : Neofelis Verlag, [2017]
Description
303 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 21 cm

Availability

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Firestone Library - Stacks QL85 .A44 2017 Browse related items Request

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    Editor
    Summary note
    "In American history, animals are everywhere. They are a ubiquitous presence in myriad historical, literary, biographical, scientific and other documents and narratives of the American past--a past that, just like the present, was shaped by a multiplicity of relations between humans and other creatures, ranging from coexistence and conviviality to hostility, subjugation and extermination. While such quintessentially American species as the bison, the mustang or the grizzly continue to roam the discursive, imaginary and, now to a much lesser degree, the geographical spaces of the nation, the less iconic creatures of civilization--the various species of domesticated working and companion animals--have arguably played an even more critical role in the genesis of modern American culture and society throughout the 'long nineteenth century.'"--Page 4 of cover.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references.
    Contents
    • Introduction. A declaration of interdependence. American history and the challenges of postanthropocentric historiography / Dominik Ohrem
    • I. Animal lives and the contours of American modernity. "To the admirers of the feathered creation" : the birth of the pet industry and the trade in songbirds in nineteenth-century America / Katherine C. Grier
    • Ciferae in the city / Roman Bartosch
    • Horses, cameras, and a multitude of gazes : visualizing animal athletes, 1890s-1930s / Olaf Stieglitz
    • Modes of production, modes of seeing : creaturely suffering in Upton Sinclair's The jungle / Michael Malay
    • II. Animality and its intersections : the politics of human-animal relations. Black dogs, bloodhounds, and best friends : African Americans and dogs in nineteenth-century abolitionist literature / Brigitte Fielder
    • Man's best and worst friends : the politics of pet preference at the turn of the twentieth century / Keridiana Chez
    • "Sheep is life" : the Navajo, cultural genocide, and the animal as cultural property and historical witness / Aimee Swenson
    • III. Exploration, expansion and manifest destiny : contexts and legacies. Ardent creatures : William Bartram and the limits of compassion / Neill Matheson
    • The ends of man : the zooanthropological imaginary and the animal geographies of westward expansion in antebellum America / Dominik Ohrem
    • The passenger pigeon and its role in perceptions of manifest destiny / Andrew Howe.
    Other title(s)
    Perspectives on animals, animality and U.S. culture, 1776-1920
    ISBN
    • 9783958080379 ((pbk.))
    • 3958080375 ((pbk.))
    LCCN
    2017377596
    OCLC
    931645486
    International Article Number
    • 9783958080379
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