Author: Caroline Abbott

Caroline Abbott is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. She is an environmental historian working at the intersections of environmental and animal history, empire, and North American frontiers (with a fondness for predators and print). She is an editor at the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) and holds an M.Res. from the University of Glasgow.
EHN Blog by Caroline Abbott
Read More

Axes on the Ground: Wolves and Women on the North American Frontier

Nineteenth-century US print media is rife with interactions between white settlers and the wolves they slaughtered. Print played host to the evolutions of folkloric villains, heroes, and gender norms in ways that directly impacted national identity and settler conceptions of the so-called American frontier. North American frontiers provided an opportunity for settler women to embody gender roles different from those handed down to them in European folklore. What would we learn about these ideas by approaching the settler women with blood on their hands?