Annotated Bibliography: Compiled while Developing “A Cultured City Woman and Her Horse”

Well, the semester is all over; so, here is my annotated bibliography of all of the sources that I read in search of my methodology and argument. You can see my evolution from a landscape argument, to a animal argument, a brief diversion with a landscape/animal painting argument, then to an animal activist argument, to an animals as curiosity argument, and finally I stumbled into this curious tension between Trist and her horse when I realized that for more than half of the diary she spends hours each day on her horse. Because I plan to use this idea in my thesis I will not post the final version of my paper on this public blog. It is, however, posted in UCF Webcourse for classmates to read.

Thanks for a wonderful semester every one!

If you fall off of your horse get right back up and keep on riding.

~Blake

L. Blake Vives

Dr. Lisa Logan

LIT 6936: Early American Women and/in Cultural Studies

8 December 2011

Annotated Bibliography:

 Compiled while Developing “A Cultured City Woman and Her Horse”

Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print.

Adams defines the concept of the “absent referent” and argues that perceiving our food in this manner affects the human-animal perception and treatment of non-human animals in a way that makes it easier to mistreat and abuse animals.  She also explores the ways that meat eating is built into the conceptualization of the American man and power.  She explains how the vegetarian body is thought of as deformed and “weaker” and even points out how our language reduces animals to unsexed goods.  I read this book because I thought it might help in my discussion of the Trist’s perception of game and farm animals but I found that it was too contemporary and did not work with Trist’s early American diary; I am also personally fascinated with the topic.  

Alaimo, Stacy. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca: Cornell

            UP, 2000. Print.

Alaimo argues against Annette Kolodny’s claim that early American women envisioned the frontier as a domestic garden.  Alaimo says that instead of seeing a domestic space women actually viewed an “undomesticated” space free from the restraints of domestic confines such as gender norms and used the wilderness to subvert and escape these ideological restrictions. This book was the first theoretical text that I read (and I did read all of it because I actually had free time in the first week of the semester) when I was searching for my methodology.  I did not use it because I shifted my focus from landscape to animals.

Bell, Aaron. “The Dialectic of Anthropocentrism.” Critical Theory and Animal Liberation. Ed.

John Sanbonmatsu. New York: Rowman, 2011. 160-75. Print.  

Philosopher Aaron Bell argues that because Enlightenment thinkers believed that nonhuman nature operated mechanically it was easy to see nature as something “other” than human, claim superiority, and assert the right to dominate (165-166).  I read this book chapter because it traces the philosophical origins of speciesism and human domination over animals.  It did not end up working with my argument but I was able to use it in another paper.   

Culley, Margo. “‘I Look at Me’: Self as Subject in the Diaries of American Women.” Women’s

 Studies Quarterly 17.3/4 (1989): 15-22.  JSTOR. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.

Culley explains the evolution of American diary practices in the past two hundred year and the development of the author as a subject of the diary. She defines the genre of eighteenth-century American secular journals as a semi-public document written by both men and women, which contrasts with the modern idea that diaries are kept by women as private documents (16).  This source helped me explain and contextualize the physical artifact of Trist’s travel diary.

Donovan, Josephine.  “Sympathy and Interspecies Care: Toward a Unified Theory of Eco and

Animal Liberation.” Critical Theory and Animal Liberation. Ed. John Sanbonmatsu. New York: Rowman, 2011. 277-94. Print.

Donovan argues for a feminist-ethics-of care when conceptualizing animal welfare.  She says that humans need to re-learn how to have sympathy for animals; she specifically discusses the treatment of livestock.  I intended to use this source to examine how Trist views livestock but I edited that section out of the final draft.

Freeman, Carrie Packwood.  “Embracing Humananimality: Deconstructing the Human/Animal

Dichotomy.”  Arguments about Animal Ethics. eds. Greg Goodale and Jason Edward Black.  New York: Rowman, 2010. 11-29. Print.

Packwood claims that humans are morally obligated to understand that animals are our kin.  She makes suggestions for how to go about recognizing our “humanimality” in our daily lives including using the terms “human-animal” and “non-human animal” to signal a recognition of our own animality.  This source was helpful to my paper because I used it to explain to my reader the human/animal boundary, which I focused on in my exploration of Trist’s relationship with her horse.

Gray, Kathryn Napier. “Captivating Animals: Science and Spectacle in Early American Natural

Histories.” A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America. Eds. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 517-32. Print.

Gray argues that colonial American travelers’ descriptions of the environment as a spectacle inspired expansion of the colonies and the eventual independence of America.  She says that these travelers depicted nature as “a captivating spectacle,” which affected American politics and ideology (530).  I found this source valuable to my original argument about landscape but I was unable to relate it to her relationship with her horse.

Grenby, M. O. “‘A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things’: Sarah Trimmer and The

Guardian of Education.” Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi

Myers. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005. 137-161. Print.

Grenby argues that although Trimmer was a conservative woman in her religious beliefs work with her periodical The Guardian of Education was radical because she built up children’s literature as the essential way to maintain a stable nation, especially during times of war.  I read this source when I planned to compare Trimmer’s conduct manual about how children should treat animals with Trist’s perception of animals because I narrowed my focus to Trist I did not need this source.   

Guardian of Education.

Holinger, Bruce.  “Of Pigs and Parchment: Medieval Studies and the Coming of the Animal.”

PMLA 124.2 (2009): 496-502. Print.

Hollinger chronicles criminal prosecutions of animals in the Middle Ages.  He also argues that in a “parchment culture” there are ethical implications to the mass slaughter of animals for the production of literature.  While the idea of books as animal parts was certainly related to the content of our course it was not related to my argument.

Imbarrato, Susan C. “Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth House Trist.” Declarations of               

               Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography. Knoxville: U of                      

               Tennessee P, 1998. 40-85. Print.

Imbarrato argues that Trist’s first-person observations provide scholars with the opportunity to see the early American landscape through a female settler’s eyes, which show Trist imagining herself as a landlady anticipating the prospect of human improvement of the raw “wilderness” (69-76).  Imbarrato extends Kolodny’s argument to claim that Trist’s observations of nature show that she and other settlers viewed the environment in relation to its ability to support the developing American nation, and that these attitudes were “an unfortunate premonition of greater environmental neglect to come” (74).  This source was useful for my literature review of the scholarly conversation. 

Johnson, Rochelle. “Placing Rural Hours.” Reading Under the Sign of Nature. eds. John

 Tallmadge and Henry Harrington. Salt Lake: U of Utah P, 2000. 64-84. Print.

            Johnson argues that her examination of Rural Hours reveals overlooked ways that nature is represented in nineteenth-century America.  She focuses on the way that the text literally describes aspects of the natural world, instead of human-centered metaphors.  I read this source during the early stages of planning my paper when I considered examining nature and landscape in Trist’s text; I did not pursue this topic.

Johnson, Victoria. “Everyday Rituals of the Master Race: Fascism, Stratification, and the Fluidity

of ‘Animal’ Domination.” Critical Theory and Animal Liberation. Ed. John Sanbonmatsu. New York: Rowman, 2011. 277-94. Print.

            Johnson argues that the “animalization” of humans to justify horrific violence towards them is only possible because humans are taught through our cultures that it is alright to kill animals because they are less than human.  Further, she says that the spatial separation of “farm” from the “urban” city also separates humans from the living animals that that eat, which leads to a desensitized view of their deaths.  I planned to use this source to examine the city/frontier dynamic in Trist’s perception of the animals that they hunted.  I found this text to be superfluous once I changed my argument.   

Kolodny, Annette. Introduction. “The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to

Natchez, 1783-84.” By Elizabeth House Trist. Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives. Ed. Annette Kolodny. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. 181-200. Print.

Kolodny explains that Trist’s text includes many observations about the frontier landscape and natural resources because Jefferson, her close friend who was interested in naturalist science, was her intended audience.  She says that the diary is much more than that because it offers Trist’s unique perspective of frontier conditions when she authored the diary.  This text gave me the contextual and foundational information from which to build my own argument.

----.  The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860.

            Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984. Print.

Kolodny explains that Trist imagined that the “wild” frontier would be developed into garden cities, and that Trist saw beauty in raw nature only when it resembled a domestic garden (39-47).  I used this source as a part of my literature review to describe the surprisingly short scholarly conversation about the text.       

----. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters.

            Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975. Print.

Kolodny argues that since the beginning of America’s colonization its settlers have viewed the land as a feminine figure.  She explores the implications and psychological impact that this view has had on Americans and on the environment that we call home. Because Imbarrato quoted this text to build her argument I wanted to go directly to the source and quote from that for my literature review.  Despite only playing a small part in my literature review I actually read this entire text because it was fascinating.

Lewis, Andrew J.  “Gathering for the Republic: Botany in Early Republic America.”  Colonial

 Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. Eds. Londa L.

Schiebinger, and Claudia Swan. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. 66-80. Print.

Lewis argues that early American views of nature were influenced by botanists’ attempts to appropriate British colonial naturalist specimen gathering and cataloging methods, which were based on Enlightenment science, for use in the new republic (68).  I originally included this source as a way to contextualize Trist’s desire to see the mammoth bones.  When I revised my paper to focus on the horse, I took this section out.  I did leave a citation in my introduction, which helped me contextualize the subject matter in Trist’s diary.  

Lundblad, Michael.  “From Animal to Animality Studies.” PMLA 124.2 (2009): 496-502. Print.

Michael Lundblad introduces the concept of animality studies to separate it from animal studies—which he argues is more focused advocacy for nonhuman animals and their needs (496-97, 500).  Lundblad defines animality studies as “work that emphasizes the history of animality in relation to human cultural studies, without an explicit call for nonhuman advocacy” (500).  This source was vital to my paper because this theoretical lens allowed me to focus on how animality, specifically “horseness,” is defined in relation to “humanity” in the historical context of early America.

Philippon, Daniel J. “Is Early American Environmental Writing Sustainable? A Response to

            Timothy Sweet.” Early American Literature 45.2 (2010): 417-23. MLA International

            Bibliography. Web. 30 September 2011.

In response to Sweet, Philippon argues that human behavior and beliefs are at the root of the damage to the environment and to truly find solutions to our environmental problems we must examine ourselves, our definition of “human,” and ultimately change our behaviors (432-34).  He agrees with Sweet that that early American writing is a good place to look for the unsustainable behaviors that are currently overlooked today (436-37).  I tried to apply Philippon’s argument to Trist’s attitudes towards animals to argue that they relate to our perception of animals today.  I found that this argument was much too broad to work in a conference paper and revised my paper to take this source out.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Scratches on the Face of the Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the

            Land of the Bushmen.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 119-43. JSTOR. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.

Pratt defines the discourse of “Othering” and argues that European language for the Other should not simply be read as one formulaic pattern but as a discourse with  a “proliferation of meaning” (122).   I planned to use this source to discuss landscape in Trist’s diary and evaluate whether or not she used Othering discourse but because I shifted my focus to her horse it became unnecessary. 

Raber, Karen L. “How to Do Things with Animals: Thoughts on/with the Early Modern Cat.”

Early Modern Ecostudies: From the Florentine Codex to Shakespeare. Eds. Thomas Hallock, Ivo Kamps, and Karen L. Raber. New York: Palgrave, 2008. 93-112. Print.  

            Karen Raber claims that animal studies can yield productive investigations of animals in the early modern field of studies.  To illustrate her argument she reads a painting of a gentleman and his cat and derives meaning about the human/cat relationship in the early modern period from this analysis.  She concludes that the cat is posing for his own separate portrait.  I loved this source and was briefly inspired to try to read paintings of humans and animals in relation to Trist’s perception of them but I found the subject too nebulous and my experience with paintings lacking.   

Sweet, Timothy. “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing.” American Literary

History 22.2 (2010): 419-31. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 October 2011.

Sweet explains that because contemporary Americans still view nature from a colonial perspective it is vital to explore early American nature writing, such as travel writing, in order to find sustainable (non-colonial) ways to live with nonhumans (426-28).   I originally wanted to use Sweet’s argument to argue that Trist’s colonial perception of animals extend beyond the temporal constraint and relates to contemporary definitions of animality and “humanness;” however, I revised my paper to make my argument specifically about Trist in the context of the early American frontier. 

Wolfe, Cary. “Human, All Too Human: “Animal Studies” and the Humanities.” PMLA 124.2

(2009): 496-502. Print.

Wolfe gives an overview of the major thinkers in animal studies theory and explains how it has evolved.  This article was useful to my personal understanding of the field of animal studies but was not useful to my project because Wolfe stressed that studying the non-human to understand the human leads to a biased “humanist” reading of the text.  His definition of animal studies did not fit what I needed to do with Trist and her horse.