Professor: Holly Dugan
Department: English
Title: The Famous Ape
Description: My current book project, “The Famous Ape” argues that there
is much to learn about our history from studying how we’ve treated our
closest animal relatives: apes. In it, I trace the simian celebrities
renowned in their own time period for aping our best and worst qualities,
many of whom paid dearly for having such skills. My title comes from
Hamlet’s odd allusion in that play’s famous closet scene, an allusion
that is as confusing as it is intriguing. In it, Hamlet warns his mother not
to be “like the famous ape,” who sought “to try conclusions.” Despite
Hamlet’s specificity (he uses the definite article) and his conviction that
the lessons of this example are well known, no one seems to know a thing
about the so-called “famous” ape. Gertrude leaves the scene convinced of
Hamlet’s madness, and most critics do, too. My book takes a different
approach, addressing that absence directly by seeking to trace the forgotten
history of various “famous apes” from the sixteenth to the twentieth
century, all of whom were quite well known in their own time, and who were
used to “try” conclusions about human and animal boundaries, but who are
now mostly forgotten and excluded from our histories of modernity.
Because I’ve found more examples than I can address in the book, I am
building a public humanities website to share this information, which is
comprised of brief biographies of each “famous ape.” My hope is that in
seeing the repetition latent in these histories and by learning more about
these creatures as individuals, readers will come to their own ethical
conclusions about these entertainment practices.
Duties: All that’s needed is a willingness to learn more about historical
research and animal history.
Research tasks may include 1. primary research in newspaper archives of the
19th and 20th century (depending on students’ skills & interest); managing a
public-facing humanities research account linked to the project (ie,
summarizing research and drafting content for blog posts; strategizing about
promotion across platforms; acquiring image rights); building/maintaining
research database.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: hdugan@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be
met. Students selected to be research assistants should contact Brianna Crayton (bcrayton@gwu.edu) whether they intend to pursue credit or not.
