Susan Nance

Education

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2003
M.A. Simon Fraser University, 1999
B.A. Simon Fraser University, 1997
 

Professional

Animal History (scholarly journal)
        Lead Editor and Co-Founder, 2023-
University of Guelph,
        Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare, Affiliated Faculty, 2007-
        History Department, 2004-

Research

animal history
environmental history
live performance and communication
entertainment and information industries
North American West
America in the world

   Susan is currently working on a new project, Animals of the Las Vegas Strip, a study of the nature and scope of the wild and exotic animal trade in the United States grounded in the history of one American city. The project is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and brings together the fields of animal, environmental, consumer, and entertainment history. It asks: What was it like to be a trafficked wild animal in the 20th century?

   Susan's most recent articles and other things are posted below and at www.susannance.com

   Visit the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare: www.uoguelph.ca/ccsaw/

media contact: snance@uoguelph.ca

Publications

    books
Animals in 19th Century America: A History in Documents, Broadview Sources Series (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, forthcoming).

editor with Jennifer Marks, Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023).

Ranching and the American West: A History in Documents, Broadview Sources Series (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2021).

Rodeo: An Animal History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).
  > 2021 winner of the Western Literature Association - Thomas J. Lyon Book Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies

Animal Modernity: Jumbo the Elephant and the Human Dilemma (Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015).

editor, The Historical Animal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015).

Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
  > shortlisted for the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association

How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

    articles and book chapters
with Dan Vandersommers and Thomas Aiello, "Animal History: A Brief Introduction to Its Past and Future," Animal History 1, no. 1 (2024), 1-18.

"Cattle and Blizzards: Lessons from the Big Die-Up in 1880s Montana," in Susan Nance and Jennifer Marks, ed., Bellwether Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023), 73-99.

"Who is a Greyhound? Reflections on the Nonhuman Digital Archive," in Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History, edited by Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraj (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2022), 91-116.

"Children, Animals, and the Fantasies of the Circus," in Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture, edited by Brenda Ayers and Sarah Elizabeth Maier (New York: Routledge, 2019), 215-36.

“Who Was Greasy Sal? Outlaw Horses and the Spirit of Calgary in the Automobile Age," special issue: Tourism History in Canada, edited by Jack Little and Ben Bradley, Histoire sociale/Social History 49, no. 99 (June 2016): 371-89.
    > also available as: "Outlaw Horses and the True Spirit of Calgary in the Automobile Age," in Jim Ellis, ed., 
       Calgary: City of Animals (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017), 10-21.

“A Star is Born to Buck: Animal Celebrity and the Marketing of Professional Rodeo” in Sport, Animals and Society, edited by Michelle Gilbert and James Gillett (New York: Routledge, 2013), 173-91.

“Game Stallions and Other 'Horseface Minstrelsies' of the American Turf,” Theatre Journal, Special Issue on Interspecies Performance 65, no. 3 (October 2013): 355-72.
    > featured on the JStor Daily blog: "The Myth of the Noble Racehorse"

"Jumbo: A Capitalist Creation Story," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture 23 (Winter 2012), 82-93, special issue: Marketing Animals.

“On Wild Animals, Hubris and Redemption: A Review of Water for Elephants, The Elephant in the Living Room, and One Lucky Elephant,” Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies 20, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 401-407.

"Elephants and the American Circus," in The American Circus, edited by Susan Weber, Kenneth Ames and Matthew Wittman (New York: Yale University Press/Bard Graduate Center, 2012), 232-49.
  > collection named Choice outstanding academic title, Theatre and Dance category

“The Ottoman Empire and the American Flag: Patriotic Travel before the Age of Package Tours, 1830-1870,” Journal of Tourism History 1, no. 1 (March 2009): 7-26.

“The Veiled Prophet’s Oriental Tale: St. Louis’ Famous Carnivals in Context, 1878-1895,” Missouri Historical Review 103, no. 2 (January 2009): 90-107.

“Becoming Bodacious: Aufstieg und Fall eines Rodeobullen [Becoming Bodacious: The Rise and Fall of a Rodeo Bull]” in Ich, das Tier, edited by Jessica Ullrich, Friedrich Weltzien und Heike Fuhlbrügge (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2008), 235-48.

“A Facilitated Access Model and Ottoman Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 34, no. 4 (October 2007): 1056-77.

"Respectability and Representation: The Moorish Science Temple, Morocco and Black Public Culture in 1920s Chicago," American Quarterly 54, no. 4 (December 2002): 623-59.

"Mystery of The Moorish Science Temple: Southern Blacks and American Alternative Spirituality in 1920s Chicago," Religion and American Culture 12, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 123-66.

    selected curations, roundtables, and comments
"How Can We Represent the Diversity of the Ranching West?" Broadview Press Blog, April 5, 2022.

"The Future of Greyhound Adoption & Advocacy," Faunalytics.org, July 14, 2021.

"Roundtable: Animal History in a Time of Crisis," Agricultural History 94, no. 3 (2020): 444-84.

"The Calgary Stampede Isn't Going Anywhere," NiCHE - Network in Canadian History and Environment, July 23, 2019.
  > a version of this piece also appeared at: "Rodeo is a Theatre of Violence and Danger - And It's Not Going Anywhere," The Conversation, July 30, 2019.

"The Privatization of Nature and the Future of Circus Elephants in America," AHA Today Blog, May 31, 2016.

"Animal History: The Final Frontier?" The American Historian (November 2015): 29-34.

"The Troubling Origins of the Circus Elephant Act," JHU Press Blog, March 12, 2015.

"Ape Cam: Zoo Pets and Surveillance Culture," In Media Res: a media commons project, August 21, 2013.