Mar 7, 2023
Reading Group: Animal Fibers as Sources of Inquiry
- 16:30 to 18:00
- Reading Group
- Dept. III
The Proteins and Fibers Working Group is pleased to announce a series of monthly meetings to discuss the topic of animal fibers. This reading group fosters multidisciplinary discussion aimed at resetting the boundaries of what counts as and can be known about animal materials as sources of historically sensitive inquiry. Building upon our ongoing conversations on how the identification and analyses of animal materials exist across different realms of expertise and disciplines we pose the following questions:
- How do animal fibers result from processes of rendering animal tissues?
- How do different scholars locate animal fibers in time and space despite their historical invisibility?
- How can historicizing studies of animal materials productively challenge assumptions of human exceptionalism? How does the study of animal materials relative to knowing fibers confront, confuse, or affirm distinctions between animals and plants?
- What has motivated people in different professions to develop substitutions that mimic animal materials or their behaviors?
Meetings will be held via Zoom and in person with pre-circulated readings on the following dates:
2023 Meeting Schedule:
07.03.2023 16:30 R. 141
13.04.2023 16:30 R. 141
09.05.2023 16:30 R. 141
08.06.2023 16:30 R. 265
26.07.2023 16:30 R. 141
For our first meeting on Thursday, March 7, 2023 , we will discuss the following:
The Nonhuman Turn.
Grusin, Richard, ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2015, Preface, pp. I to XXIX.
Spider Silk.
Brunetta, Leslie; Craig, Catherine L. Yale University Press, 2010, Preface, pp. IX to XVII
Contact and Registration
All are welcome! To indicate your interest in joining this reading group and to receive a copy of the readings, please contact Isabela Dornelas at ideoliveiradornelas@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.