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

狩猎是美国边疆身份的重要组成部分。只要想想萨拉·佩林持枪的公关噱头，就会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。这项研究项目试图通过关注19世纪的西方来解构狩猎的神话和功能。正是在19世纪，美国实现了对西部及其土地和资源的全面接管。这些年也见证了西部的建设，作为一个充满想象力的地理，一个冒险的地方，不朽的风景，有魅力的动物和流行文化中的荒野英雄。狩猎及其周围的环境文化规范代表了这种获得和幻想过程的重要组成部分。尽管在美国流行文化中，拓荒者作为理想型人物无处不在--比如丹尼尔·布恩和戴维·克罗基特，水牛比尔·科迪，甚至卡斯特将军和西奥多·罗斯福--但事实证明，学术界对这位猎人英雄以及狩猎与自然相遇的机制的处理是微不足道的。学术倾向于围绕着支持和反对范式。历史学家已经提出了一些具有挑衅性的国家调查(Herman(2001))，但关于西方的专门项目还没有写出来。这个项目承诺以西方历史经典为基础，结合宝贵的环境历史视角，对西部狩猎进行全新的审视。这里非常有趣的是猎人和猎人之间的互动，自然，身份和记忆之间的关系：可以跨越地理和时间翻译的主题。该项目本质上是跨学科的，非常注重文本和视觉的一系列来源。19世纪的日记、出版的自传和探险家的记述、照片和标本展品都值得在这里作为狩猎文物及其环境文化印记进行分析。“顿悟”指的是狩猎是人与动物之间的一种现实的、理想化的遭遇，在这个过程中，注意到了最近的文化理论，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(有时是矛盾的)关系，以及对空间的生态建筑及其与归属和身份形成的关系的审查。它还为各种学术辩论提供了信息，包括将自然建设为个人挑战的熔炉；枪支文化的传播；性别调整和男性英雄形象的制作；野生动物管理和消费；纪念品和奖杯的领取；帝国与空间的关系和休闲的政治经济学；以及封闭的边疆(以及随之而来的环境变化)与新兴的保护伦理的并存。该项目以狩猎为主题，探讨更广泛的问题，涉及人类与动物和空间的互动方式、它们作为生产物的消费(经济、艺术、象征性等)，以及利用狩猎的人类学来探索性别、肖像、技术和生存方式等问题。这些发现将通过签约专著(科罗拉多大学出版社)在学院内部以及在会议和期刊文章中传播。将在有关狩猎的公开讲座和讲座上进行更广泛的公众参与(例如，利用与肯特郡奎克斯公园鲍威尔棉花博物馆的联系，该博物馆以狩猎立体和枪支收藏而闻名)。

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).