{"title":"From Chico to Caesar, Why Chimps Are Good to Think","authors":"Jay Mechling","doi":"10.3138/cras-2023-015","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Americans since Darwin have projected onto chimpanzees, the primates closest to us in evolutionary history, their anxieties about race, sex, family, and questions regarding the relationship between nature and nurture, questions basic to understanding what it means to be human. The history of scientific discourse and discourse in American popular culture about chimpanzees since the middle of the nineteenth century show patterns responsive to specific American anxieties at moments in history.","PeriodicalId":53953,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3138/cras-2023-015","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Americans since Darwin have projected onto chimpanzees, the primates closest to us in evolutionary history, their anxieties about race, sex, family, and questions regarding the relationship between nature and nurture, questions basic to understanding what it means to be human. The history of scientific discourse and discourse in American popular culture about chimpanzees since the middle of the nineteenth century show patterns responsive to specific American anxieties at moments in history.