Description
Consider the career of an enduring if controversial icon of American entertainment: the genial circus elephant. In "Entertaining Elephants" Susan Nance examines elephant behavior - drawing on the scientific literature of animal cognition, learning, and communications - to offer a study of elephants as actors (rather than objects) in American circus entertainment between 1800 and 1940. By developing a deeper understanding of animal behavior, Nance asserts, we can more fully explain the common history of all species. "Entertaining Elephants" is the first account that uses research on animal welfare, health, and cognition to interpret the historical record, examining how both circus people and elephants struggled behind the scenes to meet the profit necessities of the entertainment business. The book does not claim that elephants understood, endorsed, or resisted the world of show business as a human cultural or business practice, but it does speak of elephants rejecting the conditions of their experience. They lived in a kind of parallel reality in the circus, one that was defined by their interactions with people, other elephants, horses, bull hooks, hay, and the weather. Nance's study informs and complicates contemporary debates over human interactions with animals in entertainment and beyond, questioning the idea of human control over animals and people's claims to speak for them. As sentient beings, these elephants exercised agency, but they had no way of understanding the human cultures that created their captivity, and they obviously had no claim on (human) social and political power. They often lived lives of apparent desperation.
An important contribution to the history of entertainment, advertising, management, and consumption as well as to the history of human-animal relations. -- Etienne Benson, author of Wired Wilderness
About the Author
Susan Nance is an associate professor of U.S. history and an affiliated faculty member at the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1935.
Reviews
Susan Nance's new book will appeal to those interested in the circus business, general lovers of the circus itself and its history, and lovers of elephants themselves and how they are treated, for better or for worse. -- Stephen Goddard History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive If you are a true lover of elephants... then you must add this book to your collection. -- Elizabeth Franklin Portland Book Review This book explores aspects of nineteenth-century American society and culture from an original and fascinating perspective. It is a worthy contribtuion to the burgeoning scholarship on the history of human-animal relationships. -- Virginia DeJohn Anderson American Historical Review Theoretically sophisticated, exhaustively researched, and elegantly composed, Entertaining Elephants will appeal to a broad range of readers, who will find themselves thinking in new ways about not only circuses, but also the myriad other human-animal relationships in American consumer culture, past and present, from rodeos, zoos, and aquariums to meat, pets, Disney characters, and other fictional animals. -- Laura Barraclough American Studies Susan Nance's study Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus is an example of how pleasing a mix of cultural history and animal studies is when an author combines them well. H-Net Reviews Overall, Entertaining Elephants is an enjoyable work that should appeal to those who are interested in cultural or animal history. It will also fit well into any animal or American studies class. However, it will provide most use to scholars who are looking for insightful studies that give agency to those that the historical record too often forgets. H-Net Reviews
Book Information
ISBN 9781421408293
Author Susan Nance
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 544g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm
An important contribution to the history of entertainment, advertising, management, and consumption as well as to the history of human-animal relations. -- Etienne Benson, author of Wired Wilderness
About the Author
Susan Nance is an associate professor of U.S. history and an affiliated faculty member at the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1935.
Reviews
Susan Nance's new book will appeal to those interested in the circus business, general lovers of the circus itself and its history, and lovers of elephants themselves and how they are treated, for better or for worse. -- Stephen Goddard History Wire - Where the Past Comes Alive If you are a true lover of elephants... then you must add this book to your collection. -- Elizabeth Franklin Portland Book Review This book explores aspects of nineteenth-century American society and culture from an original and fascinating perspective. It is a worthy contribtuion to the burgeoning scholarship on the history of human-animal relationships. -- Virginia DeJohn Anderson American Historical Review Theoretically sophisticated, exhaustively researched, and elegantly composed, Entertaining Elephants will appeal to a broad range of readers, who will find themselves thinking in new ways about not only circuses, but also the myriad other human-animal relationships in American consumer culture, past and present, from rodeos, zoos, and aquariums to meat, pets, Disney characters, and other fictional animals. -- Laura Barraclough American Studies Susan Nance's study Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus is an example of how pleasing a mix of cultural history and animal studies is when an author combines them well. H-Net Reviews Overall, Entertaining Elephants is an enjoyable work that should appeal to those who are interested in cultural or animal history. It will also fit well into any animal or American studies class. However, it will provide most use to scholars who are looking for insightful studies that give agency to those that the historical record too often forgets. H-Net Reviews
Book Information
ISBN 9781421408293
Author Susan Nance
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 544g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm
