Deep Conversations: Animal Histories

Animals have a central role in human cultures, but it is only relatively recently that animal histories have become a major scholarly focus. What insights into the past and present can we gain from histories of animals and of interspecies relationships? How do more than human histories transform our understandings of the human past? What are the methodological challenges of trying to recover the agency and experiences of animals in the past? And what does it mean to write history in a non-anthropocentric way?
In this final seminar in the Deep Conversations series, Ruby Ekkel (ANU), Sophie Chao (University of Sydney), Simon Farley (University of Melbourne) and Laura Rademaker (ANU) reflected on their experiences of grappling with the place of animals in their research and writing, the methodological challenges of engaging with animals as agents and actors in an anthropocentric discipline like History, and the ethical considerations that inform their scholarship.
'Animal Histories: Decentring the Human in Understanding the Past' was hosted by the ANU Centre for Environmental History and ANU Research Centre for Deep History on 25 October 2022 as part of the 'Deep Conversations: History, Environment, Science' seminar series.
Links:
ANU Centre for Environmental History: history.cass.a...
ANU Research Centre for Deep History:
re.anu.edu.au
Further Reading:
Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraj, Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History (2022), press.ucalgary...
Sally K. May, Joakim Goldhahn, Laura Rademaker, Graham Badari, Paul S.C. Tacon, 'Quilp's horse: Rock art and artist life-biography in western Arnhem land, Australia', Rock Art Research (2021), search.informi...
Sophie Chao, 'Bouncing back? Kangaroo-human resistance in contemporary Australia', Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (2022), journals.sagep...