THE GOSPEL OF KINDNESS explores the historical significance of the American animal welfare movement at home and overseas from the Second Great Awakening to the Second World War. Focused on laboring animals at its inception, the movement evolved into an expansive "gospel of kindness," transforming animal mercy into a signature American value.
The Gospel of Kindness explores the historical significance of the American animal welfare movement at home and overseas from the Second Great Awakening to the Second World War. Focused on laboring animals at its inception, the movement evolved into an expansive "gospel of kindness," transforming animal mercy into a signature American value.
Enrich[es] our understandings of human-animal relations in American history, as well as force[s] us to revisit and reconsider larger historiographical assumptions about agency and causation... [Davis] deftly weaves the history of animal welfare in with that of other social movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... Davis's final three chapters... are her most pathbreaking, for they move beyond the U.S. frame and put American animal advocacy in conversation with global dialogues about our young nation's empire taking place first in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico under U.S. military occupation, and later in India and Spain via Protestant missionaries. Here, Davis is particularly skillful at synthesizing existing animal studies and global histories with her own close readings of animal advocacy texts.
