Prof. Susan Nance was interviewed for a July 13 Boston Globe article about why history is always about humans and has until recently excluded animals.
A professor in the Department of History at U of G, Nance studies and writes about celebrity animals in circuses, zoos and rodeos. She’s part of a growing wave of historians who are working to incorporate animals into the story of our shared past, the article states.
Nance said that for many centuries history was written as a record of human stories and triumphs, but that she understands history to be an approximation of the past of all species. She also argues that the phenomenon of celebrity animals — such as Jumbo the circus elephant — has helped distract humans from the ways in which we cause our fellow creatures to suffer.
She says it’s her mission to share the stories people want to forget about and cover up, and that she hopes that if we understand what animals have done and coped with in the past, we’ll think about what we do in the future more clearly.
Nance studies animal history, animals in entertainment and zoos.