UWM Department of History
History 448-900
Seminar on American History
History of Human-Animal Relationships
Semester 2, 2015-2016
Holton 341
Thursdays, 4:00-6:40 p.m.
Professor Helena Pycior (helena@uwm.edu)
Office: Holton 318
Telephone Number: 229-3966
Brief Seminar Description
The seminar pursues the challenges and possibilities of incorporating nonhuman animals into
American history. Confronting animals in their physical reality and in representation, the
seminar explores the ways in which animals have helped to shape American culture and, in
turn, how animals have been affected (even “constructed”) by that culture. A key theme is the
multiplicity of human-animal relationships, with special emphasis on understanding continuity
and change in these relationships as well as interconnections between human-animal and
human-human interactions from colonial times into the 21st century.
The seminar includes common readings intended to introduce students to some key theoretical
approaches to the human-animal problem outlined by scholars of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries, including Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway. The majority of the common
readings, however, represent case studies in the history of human–animal relationships ranging
over: pet-keeping; the pet industry; animal exhibition and performance in circuses, dog and cat
shows, zoos, etc.; livestock farming; animal welfare and rights; animals, science, and medicine;
hunting; and representation of animals in art, film, literature, and museums. Except for Harriet
Ritvo’s Animal Estate (which not only offers essential background on the British influence on
human-animal relationships in North America both also exemplifies high standards in the
history of human-animal relationships), readings focus on the American past. Among the
themes that the seminar interrogates are: knowing animals in their physical reality and as
cultural constructs; tensions and contradictions embedded in Americans’ relationships with
animals (who are variously consumed as food, incorporated into clothing, trained for
performance and other anthropocentric work, used as experimental subjects, and kept as
companions in close family environments); changing ideas about animal emotions, intelligence,
and agency; and interconnections between animal and human identities.
1
Research Papers
Each student will write a twenty- to twenty-five-page original research paper based on primary and
secondary sources. The research paper will be worth 65% of the course grade. Students will be
required to choose a research paper topic in the history of relationships between animals and
humans in the American setting. The instructor will usually approve only topics that are supported
by archival and other primary sources readily available through UWM and its neighboring
institutions. To facilitate identification of topics and archival sources, the seminar will introduce
students to primary source collections available through UWM and neighboring institutions dealing
with the history of the circus, dog breeding and exhibition (the John S. Best Collection in Special
Collections of the UWM Libraries), “dog writers” and classics of canine literature, the fur trade, the
International Sled Dog Racing Association, Milwaukee County Zoo, Milwaukee Public Museum,
Milwaukee-Downer College, Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, Wisconsin Humane Society, and
Wisconsin State Fair.
Research papers may deal with the history of American animals and people interacting in a wide
variety of settings, such as the home, battlefield, circus, farm, nature preserve, scientific laboratory,
zoo, and the wild. Alternately, papers may focus on the history of the representation of animals and
human-animal relationships in American advertising, art, film, literature, monuments, museums,
and photography.
Topics may be developed within such categories of the history of human-animal relationships as:
animals and war; the humane education movement; humane societies; the animal welfare and/or rights
movements; gender, race/ethnicity, class, and animals; remembering animals (through monuments,
burial in cemeteries, taxidermy, cloning, etc.); relationships between individual humans and individual
animals (e.g., explorers, generals, kings, presidents, queens, other world leaders, and writers, and their
cats, dogs, horses, etc.); animals and religion; animals as experimental subjects, pets, human
companions, or family members; the artifacts of pet-keeping; animal control; animal exhibition in
circuses, museums, or zoos; zoo superstars; breeding of dogs, livestock, etc.; ceremonies directed at
animals (e.g., blessing of animals); animal mascots; horse racing; the 4-H movement; the fur industry;
veterinary medicine; service and therapy animals; and dog, livestock, and other animal shows and clubs.
Required Books
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early
America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Grier, Katherine C. Pets in America: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2006.
Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Required Essays: Book Chapters and Journal Articles
You will also be required to read a variety of book chapters and journal articles.
2