A Metaphor for Technological Progress or Inhumane Slaughter? Chicago Slaughterhouses in American and European Culture

Abstract

The book Slaughterhouse and Cultural Poetics: The Union Stockyards of Chicago in American and European Literature, Science, and Popular Culture by Katerina Krusheva sets out to reveal the dynamics and contradictions of the cultural meanings associated with the Chicago Stockyards. It analyzes an extensive corpus of travel accounts, memoirs, novels, and other literary works, as well as a wide range of visual sources – including photographs, advertisements, postcards, guidebooks, and comics – produced over a period of more than 150 years. This is a monumental scholarly achievement that traces the cultural representations of the Chicago Stockyards across different historical periods and through diverse literary and cultural discourses. Integrating literary texts, visual culture, and scholarly writing into a coherent analytical framework, Krusheva situates these representations within their broader social, political, and national contexts, while also exploring their gendered dimensions. Throughout the study, she illuminates both the shared patterns and the distinctive features that characterize European and American perspectives on the Chicago Stockyards.