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Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus
Susan Nance
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Description for Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus
Hardback. They often lived lives of apparent desperation. Series: Animals, History, Culture. Num Pages: 304 pages, 20, 20 black & white halftones. BIC Classification: HBJK; JFFZ; WNG. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 229 x 159 x 24. Weight in Grams: 538.
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.
Product Details
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press United States
Number of pages
304
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2013
Series
Animals, History, Culture
Condition
New
Number of Pages
304
Place of Publication
Baltimore, MD, United States
ISBN
9781421408293
SKU
V9781421408293
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-50
About Susan Nance
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 for Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus
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
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