Students Get Pig's-Eye View of History

CINCINNATI - Move over, Miss Piggy. Step aside, Porky. It's time to share the swine spotlight with real pigs.

The contributions of an animal that has been reviled, mocked and dined upon for centuries are being recognized in a Xavier University class highlighting American pig history.

"As I was doing research, I found pigs popping up in rather significant settings," said assistant history professor Karim Tiro, who teaches the class.

Few realize that swine sailed to the New World with Columbus, sparked wars between colonists and American Indians and helped pioneer the assembly line, he said.

He covers those and other topics in "A History of the Pig in America with Especial Reference to the City of Cincinnati Otherwise Known as Porkopolis."

The last part of the quirky title refers to a city that has had a love-hate relationship with pigs since its heyday as the center of the U.S. pork-packing industry.

Easy access to river transportation and farmland helped turn Cincinnati into the pork processing capital of the world by the 1840s — and the target of international jokes about its "Porkopolis" image.

Appalled at the sight of pigs being herded or roaming wild through Cincinnati streets in the late 1820s, British author Frances Trollope wrote that she would have liked the city better if the people "had not dealt so very largely with hogs."

"Cincinnati's connection with pigs has always been seen both as a serious economic issue and a point of humor or ridicule," said Dan Hurley, assistant vice president for history for the Cincinnati Museum Center.

The Xavier students say they have learned how pigs and the development of the pork industry reflect broader trends in history. They also have learned to overlook the grins and giggles that often erupt at the mention of their class.

"But when I tell people what we have learned, they don't laugh as much, and they usually think it sounds interesting," said Tara Cleveland, 21.

Virginia DeJohn Anderson, a history professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, taught a class looking at the history of human and animal relationships from antiquity to the present. But she's not aware of any history classes highlighting one animal.

"I don't think many historians in the past have taken animals seriously as historical subjects. That prejudice may be shifting as we are coming to understand how animals have shaped not just the landscape, but also relations among people," Anderson said.

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