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Papers by Neil Humphrey

Dissertation, 2024

This dissertation uncovers how, why, and where the modern pet dog originated. The average dog’s t... more This dissertation uncovers how, why, and where the modern pet dog originated. The average dog’s transition from a working animal to a nonworking companion in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom constituted the dog’s most radical alteration of purpose since their initial domestication prior to the establishment of agricultural civilization. This dissertation contends that the modern family dog originated during the long-nineteenth century (1780-1920) primarily in Victorian Britain—the initial nation altered by the interlocking forces of industrialization and urbanization. These processes provided the necessary cultural and material preconditions to reconceptualize this traditional working animal as a nonworking companion. These phenomena also provided the necessary infrastructure to manufacture commodities—from biscuits to soap—that became necessary to maintain dogs. Family dogs altered domestic and urban environments, individual and collective habits, local and global economic markets, and traditional human and canine behaviors. British pet culture surged beyond national boundaries to become the global norm governing appropriate human-dog interaction. Fundamental English practices—such as leash laws—remain normal today alongside British breeds that garner worldwide favor. Despite their integral presence in modern Western culture, however, there remains no holistic—nor interdisciplinary—narrative explaining how the typical dog transformed from a working animal to a nonworking companion. In this sense, this project rectifies this pronounced historiographical absence and knowledge gap for the broader dog-owning public. Answering this question necessitates adopting an interdisciplinary perspective entangling humans and nonhumans since Britons were not solely responsible for creating pet dogs. Rather, dogs actively shaped this process. Understanding dogs in their own right—their cognitive, sensory, and physical capabilities—hinges on including insights from animal studies, organismal biology, ethology, and canine psychology. Canine physiology and neurology especially help balance anthropocentrism by writing dog agency into this project—a fundamental intervention in environmental history that has not yet featured in dog histories. Only with this interdisciplinary methodology can historians fully grasp why the people of the past first took in dogs and why this practice remains common today throughout the industrialized world. At its core, this dissertation is a more-than-human history of modern petkeeping that examines how modernity altered—but could not separate—the coevolutionary history of humans and dogs.

Environment and History, 2024

The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nine... more The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation's upheaval triggered the turnspit's extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation's ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals' past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.

White Horse Press Blog, 2022

A public-facing blog post published in tandem with my article "Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour,... more A public-facing blog post published in tandem with my article "Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England" in the journal Environment and History. This blog post introduces my article and grapples with the implications for theorizing past and present working animals as laborers.

Newf Tide , 2021

A brief article on the history of the Newfoundland dog breed that ventures back to the Victorian ... more A brief article on the history of the Newfoundland dog breed that ventures back to the Victorian era to understand how the people of the past lauded the very same attributes that contemporaries continue to highlight in this breed today.

Masters Thesis, 2018

Throughout the nineteenth century, a diverse array of wildlife arrived in London, the center of b... more Throughout the nineteenth century, a diverse array of wildlife arrived in London, the center of both a nation and a global empire. Once in Britain, live animals were exhibited for adoring, middle- and upper-class audiences in two of the city’s most popular entertainment venues, the Exeter Change Menagerie and the London Zoological Gardens. Here, visitors interacted with animals by viewing, feeding, touching, and riding upon them, all ways formulated to consume an animal that, unlike pets, could not actually be purchased by the average Briton. In lieu of this constraint, these modes of interaction provided a way for visitors to feel a sense of transitory ownership over these creatures, thereby turning interactions with animals into a sort of immaterial capital to British consumers. Many animals were already dead before they arrived in Britain—including dinosaurs harbored in the earth for eons—or died in London after a life in captivity. Just as living creatures were exhibited, so too were deceased animals displayed in scientific museums, exhibition venues, and entertainment halls. Britons flocked to see and touch these enormous taxidermies and skeletons, astounded that such colossal creatures had been captured and supplanted from their natural environment for perpetual display in the metropolis. Bridging the gap between life and death and exemplifying the contentions of each prior chapter, this thesis concludes by examining the celebrity elephant Chunee’s lifecycle through London, from his time acting on the stage to his skeleton’s display long after his death.

Teaching Documents by Neil Humphrey

I developed this syllabus when teaching History 1682: World History from 1500 to Present, as a fu... more I developed this syllabus when teaching History 1682: World History from 1500 to Present, as a fully asynchronous 4-week course at The Ohio State University in Summer 2023.

A guide (with examples) for undergraduate students detailing how to write an effective academic b... more A guide (with examples) for undergraduate students detailing how to write an effective academic book review that I developed for use in History 2700: Global Environmental History.

A detailed guide (with examples) for undergraduate students describing how to write an effective ... more A detailed guide (with examples) for undergraduate students describing how to write an effective essay response to a prompt. I developed this document for use in History 2700: Global Environmental History.