'Epiphany in the Wilderness': Hunting and Nature in the American West

狩猎是美国边境身份的重要组成部分。人们只需要想想莎拉·佩林（Sarah Palin）的持枪公关特技，就能看到它持续的文化货币在发挥作用。今天，狩猎仍然是美国西部娱乐生活和政治经济的重要组成部分。在蒙大拿州，四分之一的居民拥有狩猎许可证，这是全国最高的比例。这个研究项目旨在通过关注十九世纪的西方来解构狩猎的神话和功能。正是在世纪，美国实现了对西部及其土地和资源的全盘接管。这些年也看到了西方作为一个富有想象力的地理，冒险的地方，纪念碑景观，魅力动物和流行文化中的荒野英雄的建设。狩猎和与之相关的环境文化规范是这种获取和幻想过程的重要组成部分。尽管拓荒者作为一种理想类型在美国流行文化中无处不在--想想丹尼尔布恩和戴维克罗克特、布法罗比尔科迪，甚至卡斯特将军和西奥多罗斯福--但学术界对“猎人英雄”和狩猎与自然相遇的机制的论述却被证明是贫乏的。学术界往往围绕着赞成和反对的范式。历史学家提供了一些挑衅性的国家调查（赫尔曼（2001）），但一个专门的项目，对西方还没有写。这个项目承诺在西方狩猎的新面貌，建立在西方历史经典，并整合了宝贵的环境历史的角度。这里最有趣的是猎人和猎物之间的互动，自然、身份和记忆之间的关系：这些主题可以跨越地理和时间。该项目本质上是跨学科的，并非常关注文本和视觉来源的范围。世纪的日记、出版的自传和探险者的描述、照片和动物标本陈列品都值得在这里进行分析，作为狩猎及其环境文化印记的文物。“顿悟”指的是狩猎作为一个实际的和理想化的人与动物之间的遭遇，并在此过程中注意到最近的文化理论，包括视觉和空间转向以及充满活力和创新的动物研究领域。该项目承诺探索我们与自然的关系（有时是矛盾的），以及对空间生态建筑的考察，以及它与归属感和身份形成的关系。它还通知各种学术辩论，包括建设自然作为个人挑战的熔炉;枪支文化的传播;性别适应和男性英雄人物的制作;野生动物管理和消费;纪念和奖杯;帝国与空间的关系和休闲的政治经济学;以及一个封闭的边界（以及随之而来的环境变化）与一个新兴的保护伦理的并列。该项目以狩猎为主题，探讨与人类与动物和空间互动方式有关的更广泛的问题，将其作为生产对象（经济，艺术，象征等），并利用狩猎人类学来探索性别，肖像，技术和生存模式等问题。研究结果将通过签约专著（科罗拉多大学出版社）以及会议和期刊文章在学院内传播。将在关于狩猎的公开讲座和讲座中进行更广泛的公众参与（例如，利用与肯特Quex公园鲍威尔棉花博物馆的联系，该博物馆以狩猎透视画和火器收藏而闻名）。

Hunting represents an important part of American frontier identity. One need only think of the gun-toting PR stunts of Sarah Palin to see its continuing cultural currency at play. Today, hunting remains an important part of the recreational life and the political economy of the American West. In Montana, one quarter of residents own a hunting license, the highest percentage in the country. This research project seeks to deconstruct both the mythology and function of hunting by focusing on the nineteenth century West. It was during the nineteenth century that the United States achieved the wholesale takeover of the West, its lands and resources. These years also saw the construction of the West as an imaginative geography, a place of adventure, monumental landscapes, charismatic animals and wilderness heroes in popular culture. Hunting and the enviro-cultural codes surrounding it represented an important part of such processes of acquisition and fantasy.Despite the ubiquity of the frontiersman as an idealtype in American popular culture - think Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill Cody, even General Custer and Theodore Roosevelt - academic treatments of the 'hunter hero' and the mechanisms of the hunting encounter with nature have proved meagre. Scholarship has tended to corral around pro and anti paradigms. Historians have offered some provocative national surveys (Herman (2001)) but a dedicated project on the West has yet to be written. This project promises a fresh look at hunting in the West that builds on the western history canon and integrates a valuable environmental history perspective. Of great interest here is the interaction between the hunter and the hunted, the relationships between nature, identity, and memory: themes that are translatable across geography and time.The project is interdisciplinary in nature, and pays great attention to a range of sources both textual and visual. Nineteenth century diaries, published autobiographies and explorer accounts, photographs, and taxidermic exhibits all warrant analysis here as artifacts of the hunt and its enviro-cultural imprint. 'Epiphany' refers to hunting as a practical and an idealized encounter between humans and animals, and in the process pays heeds to recent cultural theories including the visual and the spatial turn as well as the vibrant and innovative field of animal studies. The project promises an exploration of our (sometimes contradictory) relations with nature, as well an examination of the eco-architecture of space, and its relationship to belonging and identity formation. It also informs various academic debates including the construction of nature as a crucible of personal challenge; the spread of gun culture; gender adaptations and the crafting of the masculine hero figure; wildlife management and consumption; memorialising and trophy-taking; imperial relations with space and the political economy of leisure; and the juxtaposition of a closing frontier (and attendant environmental change) with an emerging conservation ethic. The project uses the theme of hunting to engage with wider questions relating to the way humans interact with animals and spaces, their consumption as objects of production (economic, artistic, symbolic among others) as well as using the anthropology of the hunt to explore issues of gender, iconography, technology, and modes of subsistence. The findings will be disseminated within the academy via a contracted monograph (University of Colorado Press) as well as at conferences and through journal articles. Wider public engagement will take place at public talks and lectures on hunting (for instance, using links with the Powell Cotton Museum, Quex Park, Kent, a venue noted for its hunting dioramas and firearms collections).