Multi-Species Histories: Bridging the Material and Cultural with Non-Human Animals

This panel responds to “the animal turn” in history of science, addressing non-human animals in historical research as well as challenges in writing about other animals. Animal bodies and their behaviors are explored across a range of time periods and disciplinary perspectives, ranging from laboratory experiments and livestock industries, to wildlife settings and literary works. More than solely "thinking with animals" (following Derrida), this panel proposes considering human culture from the point of view of animals' material worlds and how humans in turn have attempted to represent animality. Cathy Gere examines animal fables, most prominently The Fable of the Bees by Anglo-Dutch physician Bernard Mandeville, to discuss how stories of non-human animals serve as stand-ins for the human condition. Ana María Gómez López presents fieldwork by German paleontologist Johannes Weigelt in the U.S. Gulf Coast, focusing on how contemporary animal carcasses served as a means to understand fossilization from the distant past. Floor Haalboom reveals the importance of what animals in factory farms eat by analyzing livestock feed as a crucial scientific technology in twentieth century agriculture. Annalena Roters examines animals in contemporary art from a post-humanist perspective as a means to move beyond anthropocentrism. In conclusion, Anne van Veen proposes 'multispecies choreography' as a useful concept for writing about past practices of animal experimentation in a non-anthropocentric manner.