Gravitte, Kristen Barber (Author)
This dissertation explores representations of and conceptions of animals in American literature, science, and culture from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century and situates literary texts, their representations of animals, and their responses to phenomenological animals and contemporary conceptions of nonhuman and human within historical, religious, and scientific contexts. The dissertation argues that evolutionary theory, especially Darwinism, challenged the hierarchical human-animal binary with significant results for considerations of ethical human-animal relationships and representations of animality and humanity. The project illustrates how writers from the period employ animals to create meaning and how humans define what it means to be human via comparison with animals, arguing that the literature responds to evolutionary theory's challenge to the human-animal binary in three stages: animals as Others; animals and ethics; and human and animal subjectivity and identity. The dissertation also argues that animals themselves mean, signify, desire, communicate, and have their own perspectives, arguing that literature as well as science can help us imagine these meanings and what is it like to be a particular species different from our own. The dissertation concludes that nineteenth-century engagement with questions of animality and humanity anticipates present-day concerns in the fields of literary studies, animal studies, and posthumanism and in wider public concerns with human-animal relationships and with what it means to be "human" and/or "animal."
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/01(E), Jul 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1439141518.
Thesis
Carswell, Lilian P.;
(2004)
Telling the Truth about Animals: Epistemology, Ethics, and Animal Minds inMelville, Darwin, Saunders, and London
(/isis/citation/CBB001562113/)
Article
Pearson, Chris;
(2013)
Dogs, History, and Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB001202107/)
Article
Rose, Anne C.;
(2012)
Animal Tales: Observations of the Emotions in American Experimental Psychology, 1890--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001211209/)
Book
Janet M. Davis;
(2016)
The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB505773835/)
Thesis
Elizabeth A. McNeill;
(2022)
Speaking of Animals: Animal Psychology between Experimental Science and Imagination (1840-1920)
(/isis/citation/CBB890315766/)
Book
Karen Raber;
Monica Mattfeld;
(2017)
Performing Animals: History, Agency, Theater
(/isis/citation/CBB936448989/)
Article
Stefano Gensini;
(2011)
Il "De brutorum loquela" di Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente
(/isis/citation/CBB674890412/)
Article
Rangarajan, Mahesh;
(2013)
Animals with Rich Histories: The Case of the Lions of Gir Forest, Gujarat, India
(/isis/citation/CBB001202106/)
Article
Cecilia Muratori;
(2017)
‘In Human Shape to Become the Very Beast!’ – Henry More on Animals
(/isis/citation/CBB014303409/)
Book
Gontier, Thierry;
(2005)
Animal et animalité dans la philosophie de la Renaissance et de l'Age Classique
(/isis/citation/CBB000610366/)
Book
Richter, Virginia;
(2011)
Literature after Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001033151/)
Thesis
Nichols, Rachael L.;
(2010)
The Human Animal: Tangles in Science and Literature, 1870--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001567211/)
Book
Benedetta Piazzesi;
(2023)
Del governo degli animali. Allevamento e biopolitica
(/isis/citation/CBB409851667/)
Book
Fudge, Erica;
(2004)
Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures
(/isis/citation/CBB000550061/)
Book
Huntington, Rania;
(2003)
Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative
(/isis/citation/CBB000550453/)
Book
Burns, E. Jane;
McCracken, Peggy;
(2013)
From Beasts to Souls: Gender and Embodiment in Medieval Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001201715/)
Book
Lynn Festa;
(2021)
Fiction Without Humanity: Person, Animal, Thing in Early Enlightenment Literature and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB396379434/)
Book
Campbell, Gordon Lindsay;
(2014)
The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001422644/)
Article
Nash, Richard;
Broglio, Ron;
(2006)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB000932137/)
Book
Stefanie Stockhorst;
Jürgen Overhoff;
Penelope J. Corfield;
(2021)
Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century: From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems and Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB446524520/)
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