Publisher's Synopsis
"Bear with Me offers a vibrant history of famous bears in North American culture from the colonial period to the present. Daniel Horowitz considers the cultural significance of the proliferation of representations of bears in American popular media, arguing that these representations offer a window into both the nation's history and the psychic and affective lives of its peoples. Through the examination of various celebrity bears, Horowitz uncovers an ambivalent cultural archive of empathy, exploitation, identification, and domination in the interplay between human and ursine life-worlds. This investigation carries Horowitz across a vast terrain of references from the presence of bears in children's literature-such as Winnie the Pooh and Paddington-to cinematic representations in The Revenant and Cocaine Bear, to the subculture of gay bears. Finally, Horowitz bookends the manuscript with reflections on polar bears, considering how they'
