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Equestrian Cultures

Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity

As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing and riding to police work, farming, warfare, and therapy—and have figured heavily in the history of natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Most accounts of the equine-human relationship, however, fail to address the last few centuries of Western history, focusing instead on pre-1700 interactions. Equestrian Cultures fills in the gap, telling the story of how prominently horses continue to figure in our lives, up to the present day.

Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld place the modern period front and center in this collection, illuminating the largely untold story of how the horse has responded to the accelerated pace of modernity. The book’s contributors explore equine cultures across the globe, drawing from numerous interdisciplinary sources to show how horses have unexpectedly influenced such distinctively modern fields as photography, anthropology, and feminist theory. Equestrian Cultures boldly steps forward to redefine our view of the most recent developments in our long history of equine partnership and sets the course for future examinations of this still-strong bond.
 

288 pages | 20 halftones, 1 table | 6 x 9 | © 2019

Animal Lives

Biological Sciences: Behavioral Biology

History: European History, General History

Psychology: Animal Behavior

Sociology: Social History

Reviews

“A dozen well-balanced essays present valuable case studies in a range of critical investigations of horse-human relations, spanning the last three centuries of Western culture.”

Modern Philology

“The varied and richly nuanced essays in Equestrian Cultures explore the horse’s instrumental role in constructing modernity and navigating its social, political, economic and symbolic dimensions. From bits to bloodlines, from the fine arts to commerce and industry, as dead flesh or living cyborg: the horse’s presence in, and influence on, discourses and technologies of modernity is given innovative and theoretically grounded analysis that gives us an important new set of insights into the horse’s multiple and endlessly malleable nature and into the vicissitudes of its fortunes over the last few centuries. Equestrian Cultures will deepen and complicate current scholarship by restoring the animal presence at the heart of human historical change.”

Karen Raber, University of Mississippi

Equestrian Cultures is a highly original work that will make significant contributions to a number of disciplines: art history, economic history, literary studies, animal studies, and environmental studies. The range of topics, material, and methodologies engaged by the essays is extensive, stimulating, and characterized by extremely strong scholarship. There is much to be learned and much to enjoy in this book.”

Pia F. Cuneo, University of Arizona

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: EQUESTRIAN CULTURES
KRISTEN GUEST AND MONICA MATTFELD

PART 1 : SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

ONE / Machines of Feeling: Bits and Interspecies Communication in the Eighteenth Century
MONICA MATTFELD

TWO / Horses at Waterloo, 1815
DONNA LANDRY

THREE / The Agency and the Matter of the Dead Horse in the Victorian Novel
SINAN AKILLI

FOUR / The Aura of Dignity: On Connection and Trust in the Photographs of Charlotte Dumas
RUNE GADE

PART 2 : COMMODIFICATION AND CONSUMPTION

FIVE / Stabilizing Politics: The Stables of Weißenstein Castle in Pommersfelden (1717– 21)
MAGDALENA BAYREUTHER AND CHRISTINE RÜPPELL

SIX / Trading Horses in the Eighteenth Century: Rhode Island and the Atlantic World / 92
CHARLOTTE CARRINGTON- FARMER

SEVEN / Narratives of Race and Racehorses in the Art of Edward Troye
JESSICA DALLOW

EIGHT / “More Than a Horse”: The Cultural Work of Racehorse Biography
KRISTEN GUEST

PART 3 : NATIONAL IDENTITY

NINE / The Politics of Reproduction: Horse Breeding and State Studs in Prussia, 1750– 1900
TATSUYA MITSUDA

TEN / “Horsemeat Is Certainly Delicious”: Anxiety, Xenophobia, and Rationalism at a NineteenthCentury American Hippophagic Banquet
SUSANNA FORREST

ELEVEN / Circus Studs and Equestrian Sports in Turn- of- the- Century France
KARI WEIL

TWELVE / Heritage Icon or Environmental Pest? Brumbies in the Australian Cultural Imaginary
ISA MENZIES

Notes
Contributors
Index

Awards

Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
Won

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