Chimpanzee Child
The Affective Mobility of Meshie Mungkut in 1930s America
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3924919 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca J H Woods, Rebecca J Woods (0000-0002-4589-1447), Shira Shmuely (American Museum of Natural History, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Pages | 83-105 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Osiris (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/735519 |
| OpenAlex | W4411229633 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
In 1931, American Museum of Natural History curator Henry Cushier Raven returned from a collecting trip to West Africa with a young chimpanzee named Meshie. He raised her alongside his human children, filming scenes of supposed interspecies domestic harmony for public consumption. As Meshie matured, the conditions of captivity underlying her presence in the Raven household became painfully apparent. Meshie was banished to Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, where she died postpartum. Using the concept of affective mobility, this article examines the emotional transformations at play in Meshie’s biography: those through which she exercised autonomy and those that hindered her physical and relational opportunities
Psychoanalysis · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Psychology
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Wildlife Films
Landscapes and Labscapes
Science and film-making
Suffering For Science
The Chimpanzee Tea Party
Mothering in the frame
Humans & humanists
The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England
Visions of Apes, Reflections on Change
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |