From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional bears for more than two centuries. Bears are ubiquitous, appearing in advertisements, as logos for sports teams, and central characters in children's books, cartoons, movies, and video games. In Bear With Me, Daniel Horowitz presents a vibrant history of the pedestrian and celebrity bears who have captured our imaginations and infiltrated our everyday lives. He shows that bears' ability to represent and evoke both terror and comfort makes them well-suited for their omnipresence. Today, cultural depictions of bears largely encompass examples of human-bear relationships, reciprocity, and emotional engagement. Reminders that climate change threatens the lives of polar bears engender feelings of empathy while news of bear attacks drive us to fascinated fear. Whether examining the subculture of gay bears or the deadly consequences of anthropomorphizing animals, Horowitz charts the complexities and depth of American culture's unique and enduring relationship with bears.
Daniel Horowitz is Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies, Emeritus at Smith College and the author of many books, most recently, American Dreams, American Nightmares: Culture and Crisis in Residential Real Estate from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Preface. Polar Bears, Franz Boas, and Me ix Introduction 1 1. Folkloric Bears and Actual Ones: Sacred and Profane from the Bible to Contemporary Celebrities 11 2. The Stories of Hugh Glass: The Case of a Disappearing and Reappearing Dangerous Bear 33 3. Out of Hibernation and Into Children's Literature 47 4. Grizzly Adams: Bears He Tamed, Those He Displayed, and Those Responsible for His Death 75 5. Captive Bears and Their Captors as Workers 95 6. Teddy Bear: Another One Quickly Disappears and Frequently Reappears 129 7. Off the Poster and Out of the Zoo: Smokey Bear Goes Everywhere 149 8. Out of the Closet: Bears in the Gay World 167 9. Timothy Treadwell and Marian Engel: Bears, Humans, and Dangerous Eroticism 181 Coda. Precarity and Polar Bears 203 Acknowledgments 211 Notes 215 Select Bibliography 245 Index
"Bear With Me is a fascinating and deeply meditative two-hundred-year cultural history of America's popular obsession with bears. Analyzing an impressive range of folklore, live entertainments, literature, film, toys, cartoons, television, posters, social movements, and social media, the distinguished historian Daniel Horowitz forcefully places bears - representational and real - at the center of the American experience." - Janet M. Davis, author of The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America "In this eye-popping survey of bears in American culture from the colonial period to the present, Daniel Horowitz tackles an enormous subject with a passion and a curiosity that proves contagious. Bears entered American culture in droves and under many disguises. Horowitz has the audacity to embrace their complexity rather than explain it away." - Jon T. Coleman, author of Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation
