HIST 3310A 2020 Essay Topics
HIST 3310A 2020 Essay Topics
Here is a list of do-able topics, by which I mean that there are enough sources available to allow you to write the paper, and the question is one that you can get your teeth into. Students may work with me to come up with their own topics. To do this, I would like you to do some preliminary research to see if there are enough sources to write a paper, come up with a question, and then send me an email. I will try to help find more sources and refine your question, but may also tell you that the topic will be too hard for a term paper.
The library is closed, but I have checked that all of these sources are available online. Journals always are, but not all books are. Some of the books are on Hathitrust, which can be found on the homepage of the Carleton Library website under Fall 2020 with other Covid information. Sometimes they are linked directly from the Carleton search engine.
Urban Animals
The Urban Pig: When, and why, were pigs banned from the city? Consider and compare at least two cities. You will find articles or books on animals in New York, Montreal, Seattle, Toronto, and Winnipeg.
McNeur, Catherine. “The ‘Swinish Multitude’: Controversies over Hogs in Antebellum New York City.” Journal of Urban History 37, no. 5 (September 1, 2011): 639–60. doi:10.1177/0096144211407561.
Stray Dogs: When, and why, did cities force owners to control their dogs?Consider specific cities such as Paris, London, or Toronto.
Howell, Philip. “Between the muzzle and the leash: Dog-walking, discipline, and the modern city.” Animal cities: Beastly urban histories (2012): 221-243. Online through Carleton Library.
Purebred Dogs: When, why, and how were modern dog breeds created?
Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Harvard University Press, 1987. Chapter Two: Prize Pets. Online at Carleton Library.
Animal Welfare Movement: How was the animal welfare movement gendered?
Ingram, Darcy. Wild Things: Taming Canada’s Animal Welfare Movement.” In Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human Animal Relations in Urban Canada. Edited by Joanna Dean, Darcy Ingram and Christabelle Sethna. University of Calgary Press, 2017. Available online through the Carleton Library and also through the publisher.
The Industrial Horse: Some historians describe the horse as a “living machine” in the late 19th century city. In what ways were urban horses machines? How were they not?
Joanna Dean and Lucas Wilson. “Horse Power in the Modern City.” In Powering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600. Ed. Ruth Sandwell. McGill-Queens UP, 2016. Online at Carleton Library.
Domesticated (Farm) Animals
Bestiality: Why was there a flood of bestiality cases tried in colonial New England?
Murrin, John M. “‘Things Fearful to Name’: Bestiality in Colonial America.” Pennsylvania
History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 65 (1998): 8–43.
Aurochs in Nazi Germany: Why (and how) did Nazis try to back breed the Auroch?
Driessen, Clemens and Jamie Lorimer. “Back Breeding the Aurochs: The Heck Brothers, National Socialism, and Imagined geographies for nonhuman Lebensraum.” In Hitler’s Geographies. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Available online, google it or use this url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299461121_Back-breeding_the_aurochs_the_Heck_brothers_National_Socialism_and_imagined_geographies_for_nonhuman_Lebensraum
Domestic Animals in Early America: What happened when Europeans introduced domesticated animals, like cows and pigs, to North America? How did the animals alter relations of the European settlers with the indigenous occupants of North America?
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. Oxford University Press, 2006.Chapter One.Note that you will have to buy this book, but it only costs $9.99 for a kindle edition.
Talking Turkey: How were turkeys raised in North America before WWII. (Apart from one excellent article, there is not a lot written on turkey breeding, so you will want to consult some primary sources for this paper. Talk to the prof about this.)
Prendergast, Neil. “Raising the Thanksgiving Turkey: Agroecology, Gender, and the Knowledge of Nature,” Environmental History 16:4 (October 2011): 651-77.
Wild Animals
The Wolf:How did attitudes toward the wolf change in the 1960s and 1970s?If you like, you may focus on this aspect: can we attribute these changes to the writing of Farley Mowat or the films of Bill Mason?
Jones, Karen. “Writing the Wolf: Canine Tales and North American Environmental-Literary Tradition.” Environment & History (09673407) 17, no. 2 (May 2011): 201–28. doi:10.3197/096734011X12997574042964.Her book on this topic is available online at the Carleton Library.
Please Don’t Feed the Bears: How did attitudes to bears in change in Canadian and American national parks?Why?
Colpitts, George. “Films, Tourists, and Bears in the National parks: Managing Park Use and the Problematic ‘Highway Bum’Bear in the 1970s.”.” A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011. University of Calgary Press, 2012. 153-178. Available online from the publisher, University of Calgary Press at https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781552385265/.
Nature Fakers: President Theodore Roosevelt criticized writers like Ernest Seton Thompson for “nature faking.” He said that by giving animals the human attributes they were misleading school children. But are such traits as intelligence, intentionality, self awareness, and a sense of humor specifically human? Were these writers, in anthropomorphising animals, giving them more respect than scientists did?
Lutts, Ralph H. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science & Sentiment. University of Virginia Press, 1990. Full text available online at Hathitrust.
Women Sports Hunters: In 1900 Grace Gallatin Seton Thompson wrote a guide for women hunters, A Woman Tenderfoot. Describe the book. Did it challenge, or perhaps reinforce, existing attitudes that sports hunting was a masculine activity?
Seton, Grace Thompson. A Woman Tenderfoot (1900). Online at Carleton Library.
Animals on Display
Jumbo the Elephant: Was Jumbo’s life as a circus elephant typical? How did his story compare to that of other circus elephants in the nineteenth century?
Nance, Susan. Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus. Johns Hopkins UP, 2015. Online at Carleton Library.
The Orca and the Aquarium: How did the captivity of Skana in the Vancouver aquarium influence the Save the Whales campaign ? Would you agree with Jason Colby that this justifies captivity?
Colby, Jason.“The Whale in the City: Orca Captivity and Environmental Politics in Vancouver.” In Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human Animal Relations in Urban Canada. Edited by Joanna Dean, Darcy Ingram and Christabelle Sethna. University of Calgary Press, 2017. Online at Carleton Library and through the publisher.
Theoretical Questions
Can we write from the perspective of the animal?
Baratay, Eric. ‘Building an Animal History.’ In French Thinking About Animals. Louisa Mackensie and Stephanie Posthumus eds. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015. Available online here:https://www.academia.edu/41438781/Building_an_Animal_History.
