Through anthropomorphism, stories of non-human animal behavior have long provided scholars with moralistic fables illustrating how humans should act. Through zoomorphism, people have been portrayed as animals for reasons ranging from political to religious. These moves within the complex web of economic and social relationship that tie animals and humans together have become the focus of a great deal of scholarly attention in the last ten years. Scholars trained in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, geography, and environmental history, have begun to break down the conceptual dichotomies dividing animal and human. How were dichotomies like the following constructed and maintained? What do we gain by reanalyzing this animal-human boundary as a hybrid space? What might we lose? By bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, this workshop takes a new look at the material and social interactions of ethologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and geneticists with their animal and human subjects. In doing so, we hope to highlight continuities between the history of the natural and social sciences, and explore the resonance of concepts like language, ritual, display, and model subjects, within animal cultures and human natures.
Participants Pamela Asquith (Edmonton, Alberta) Avigdor Edminster (Minneapolis, MN) Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (York, UK) Erika Milam (Berlin) Tania Munz (Berlin) Charlotte Sleigh (Kent, UK) Marianne Sommer (Zürich) Susan Pearson (Evanston, IL) Harriet Ritvo (Cambridge, MA) Brett Walker (Bozeman, MT) Markus Wild (Berlin)
Participation is free, but registration is appreciated. To register, please contact Erika Milam: emilam@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
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