Steven Wagschal will present "Jaguars in the Metropolis: Spectacle, Violence and US Imperialism in the Early 20th Century."
Abstract: Theodore Roosevelt II (1858–1919) was an avid hunter. Often thought of as a conservationist who designated and protected a number of national parks and natural monuments, Roosevelt was also deeply involved in US military and imperial projects in the Caribbean and Latin America. His interests south of the border were not limited to activities with devastating ecological impacts, such as the construction of the Panama Canal, but also included hunting. In particular, he was fond of killing jaguars, apex predator of the Americas. What better way to project power onto the rest of the hemisphere than by killing jaguars? Since the earliest settlements in the Americas, humans have found jaguars remarkable for their beauty, power and mystery, qualities reflected in their prominent place in many Indigenous cultures’ art and belief systems across time and place.
This talk situates Roosevelt’s jaguar hunting alongside a series of interrelated practices and spectacles centered in New York City, where animals captured in Central and South America were transformed into entertainment and scientific objects. The opening of the Bronx Zoo’s Lion House in 1902, the rise of Mme. Morelli—the celebrated Big Cat trainer known as “Queen of the Jaguars”—and the circulation of animals through the transatlantic networks of exotic animal dealer Carl Hagenbeck in Hamburg reveal a shared economy. Jaguars were captured, shipped, hunted, caged, trained, studied, and exhibited, alive or dead. These activities were further connected through US-based expeditions in which elite white men and women gained notoriety as jaguar hunters, bringing back live animals for zoos and skins for museum collections. Many prominent New Yorkers, including Roosevelt, participated in such expeditions, their specimens often donated to the American Museum of Natural History. To this day, the AMNH stands in Theodore Roosevelt Park, its main entrance housed in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Building, and—until 2022—its interior patio dominated by an equestrian statue of the former president which critics called “white supremacist.” As the US projected its imperial power in the Western Hemisphere, jaguars moved from rainforest to metropolis, becoming objects through which violence was captured, curated, and displayed as scientific authority and spectacle.
Steven Wagschal is Professor of Spanish and Affiliated Faculty of Latin American Studies, Cognitive Science, and Renaissance Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. His forthcoming book, Jaguar, will be published in the Animal series of Reaktion Press (London, 2026). The book traces the history of the jaguar as an ancient and modern symbol and discusses human interactions with the species from ancient times to the present, especially in Mesoamerica and Early Modern Europe. Much of his research has focused on the textual embodiment of mental phenomena in humans and animals, especially on emotional experience and the senses. In Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds (U Toronto P, 2018), he analyzes the ways in which animals’ minds were conceived from the Middle Ages through the early modern period in Spain and Latin America. He is also the author of The Literature of Jealousy in the Age of Cervantes (Missouri UP, 2006), editor of Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña by Lope de Vega (Cervantes & Co., 2004) and co-editor (with Ryan Giles) of Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200-1750 (U Toronto P, 2018), as well as of many journal articles and book chapters.