Parlor ponds : the cultural work of the American home aquarium, 1850-1970 / Judith Hamera.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hamera, Judith.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aquariums--Social aspects--United States--History.

Aquariums.

Aquariums--United States--History.

Aquariums--United States--Historiography.

Aquariums--Great Britain--Historiography.

Home--United States--History.

Home.

History.

Historiography.

Aquariums--Social aspects.

United States--Social life and customs--19th century.

United States.

Manners and customs.

United States--Social life and customs--20th century.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

ix, 268 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2012]

Summary:

Parlor Ponds: The Cultural Work of the American Home Aquarium, 1850-1970 examines the myriad cultural meanings of the American home aquarium during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and argues that the home aquarium provided its enthusiasts with a potent tool for managing the challenges of historical change, from urbanization to globalization. The tank could be a window to an alien world, a theater for domestic melodrama, or a vehicle in a fantastical undersea journey. Its residents were seen as inscrutable and wholly disposable "its," as deeply loved and charismatic individuals, and as alter egos by aquarists themselves.

Parlor Ponds fills a gap in the growing field of animal studies by showing that the tank is an emblematic product of modernity, one using elements of exploration, technology, and science and a commitment to rigorous observation to contain anxieties spawned by industrialization, urbanization, changing gender roles, and imperial entanglements. Judith Hamera engages advertisements, images, memoirs, public aquarium programs, and enthusiast publications to show how the history of the aquarium illuminates complex cultural attitudes toward nature and domestication, science and religion, gender and alterity, and national conquest and environmental stewardship with an emphasis on the ways it illuminates American public discourse on colonial and postcolonial expansion. Book jacket.

Contents:

Promiscuous vision : the visual affinities of the home aquarium

Rural rambles and rustic adornments : early British aquarium writing

The toy of the day : American aquarium writing, 1850-1915

Toy fish

The domestic aquarium

"Foreign in the domestic sense" : tropical fish and the transnational aquarium

Conclusion : reefer madness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780472071661

0472071661

9780472051663

0472051660

9780472028108

0472028103

OCLC:

731913293