| Kristina Popova Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences [kristina.popova@iefem.bas.bg] ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2825-7938 | Download https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20964865 |
BOOK REVIEW
Abstract: The book Slaughterhouse and Cultural Poetics: The Union Stockyards of Chicago in American and European Literature, Science, and Popular Culture by Katerina Krusheva sets out to reveal the dynamics and contradictions of the cultural meanings associated with the Chicago Stockyards. It analyzes an extensive corpus of travel accounts, memoirs, novels, and other literary works, as well as a wide range of visual sources – including photographs, advertisements, postcards, guidebooks, and comics – produced over a period of more than 150 years. This is a monumental scholarly achievement that traces the cultural representations of the Chicago Stockyards across different historical periods and through diverse literary and cultural discourses. Integrating literary texts, visual culture, and scholarly writing into a coherent analytical framework, Krusheva situates these representations within their broader social, political, and national contexts, while also exploring their gendered dimensions. Throughout the study, she illuminates both the shared patterns and the distinctive features that characterize European and American perspectives on the Chicago Stockyards.
Keywords: Slaughterhouse, Chicago, literature, popular culture.
- Declaration by Authors
- Ethical Approval: Approved
- Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
- Source of Funding: ERC Project “Taming the European Leviathan: The Legacy of Post-War Medicine and the Common Good”. The project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 854503).