Research Guides: Animal Studies Research Guide: Entertainment

Entertainment

Industries using nonhumans for human entertainment including circus, rodeo, and film.

Primary Sources

Special Collections

Ledger (Pennsylvania),1895-1903 (SC 01001)
This ledger book was used to record dog racing competitions in Pennsylvania. It has names, ages, colors, breeds and other information about the different dogs, as well as the names of owners.
John Tyler Letter to Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, 1835 (SC 00133)
Letter from United States Senator John Tyler (1790- 1862) to Benjamin Ogle Tayloe dated May 30, 1835, in which he discussed horses and horse racing.
Galt Papers (I), 1745-1892 (Mss. 78 G13)
Letter, Sarah Trebell Galt, Williamsburg, to Miss Mary Galt, Norfolk, 1806 October 31. She urges her to come for a visit. There has been racing all week with Dr. Tazewell winning the purse the first day, Dr. Dixon the second day, and Mr. Moseley yesterday. There is a mule race today with a ball at night at Mr. Moss's. Last Sunday she went with others to visit Capt. Bright and enjoyed oysters, fruit, and drams.
Diary (Frederick County, Va.), 1795-1799 (Mss. MsV D4)
Diary of an unidentified teacher and miller who lived near Millwood, Frederick County., Virginia and worked for the Thruston family. The volume discusses weather, his work, neighborhood events, and cockfighting.

Online

Rockwell & Hurlburt's free exhibition of trained horses, dogs and bears, and public driving in the streets without reins or harness, 1868
Advertisement for traveling trained animal exhibition
Spalding's monster North American circus, 1847
"The largest in the world. 200 men and horses! With all the appurtenances of corresponding extent and grandeur." Reproduction of the original from the American Antiquarian Society.

Secondary Sources

Sideshow U. S. A. by Rachel Adams
Call Number: GV1835 .A33 2001
ISBN: 0226005399
Publication Date: 2001
A staple of American popular culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the freak show seemed to vanish after the Second World War. But as Rachel Adams reveals in Sideshow U.S.A., images of the freak show, with its combination of the grotesque, the horrific, and the amusing, stubbornly reappeared in literature and the arts.
The Psychology and Behavior of Animals in Zoos and Circuses by Heini Hediger
Call Number: QL785 .H366 1968
ISBN: 0486622185
Publication Date: 1968
Translation of Skizzen zu einer Tierpsychologie im Zoo und im Zirkus.
No Animals Were Harmed: the controversial line between entertainment and abuse by Peter Laufer
Call Number: HV4711 .L28 2012
ISBN: 076276385X
Publication Date: 2011
The attack of a trainer at Sea World by a killer whale in February 2010 is the catalyst for this examination of the controversial role animals have played in the human arenas of entertainment and sports.
Badd Newz by Kathy Strouse
Call Number: Rare Book - Chapin-Horowitz HV4746 .S77 2009
ISBN: 1439254435
Publication Date: 2009
Book Author, Kathy Strouse with HSUS Undercover Operative Dog Angel, takes you deep into the seamy underground world of dog fighting for the behind the scenes story of the Michael Vick case.
Blackfish by Gabriela Cowperthwaite (director)
Call Number: Video Collection SF408.6.K54 B53 2013 DVD
Publication Date: 2013
Documentary about captive killer whales in SeaWorld entertainment parks
Rodeo: an anthropologist looks at the wild and the tame by Elizabeth A. Lawrence
Call Number: GV1834.5 .L38 1982
ISBN: 0870493280
Publication Date: 1982

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Entertainment

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