Publication
JLGC 08: Animals (Un)tamed: Human-Animal Encounters in Science, Art, and Literature
The eighth issue of the JLGC explores the diverse and interdisciplinary research on our multifaceted relationship with animals which is currently taking place, re-examining the relationship between humans and animals, and the definitions involved.
- Author
- Editors in chief: Sophia Hendrikx and Merel Oudshoorn Editorial board: Editors: Zexu Guan, Andries Hiskes, Leanne Jansen, Glyn Muitjens, Jun Nakamura, Liselore Tissen
- Date
- 13 July 2020
The articles included in the present issue of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference, titled Animals (Un)tamed. Human–Animal Encounters in Science, Art, and Literature, are the result of the diverse and interdisciplinary research on our multifaceted relationship with animals which is currently taking place. The fifth biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, held in April 2019, shared this same theme. This conference on “Animals: Theory, Practice, and Representation” gave PhD and Master students the opportunity to present, exchange and discuss their research relating to animal studies with participants from diverse backgrounds. The resulting exchange focused on a re-examination of the relationship between humans and animals, and the definitions involved. Many of the articles in the present issue are result of the lively debate which took place during this conference. The contributions to this issue of JLGC reflect the wide variety of approaches in animal studies.
Christine Kleiter and Maike Riedinger focus on animals as objects of research in respectively the sixteenth and twentieth century. Kleiter examines how knowledge about the Brazilian tanager — a South American songbird — was transferred and transformed in various ways in the early modern period. Maike Riedinger explores debates in the German-language field of animal psychology at the turn of the twentieth century on the question if animals — and more specifically, ants — were endowed with minds, and if so, of what kind. Efi Mosseri and Dorothee Fischer consider animals as participants in human activities and endeavours in the Middle Ages and our present time. Efi Mosseri examines depictions of dogs in medieval illuminated books of hours, focusing in particular on a manuscript from the early fourteenth century, the Margaret Hours, which includes depictions of a dog alongside the devotee in prayer. Dorothee Fischer focuses on artistic collaborations between human and non-human artists to analyse the contemporary phenomenon of interspecies art and the role of agency within this discussion. Finally, Tim Vergeer examines the role of animals in Early Modern theatre.
For the cover of this issue we chose a detail of a photograph taken by Dorothee Fischer for a case study focusing on CMUK, an interspecies collective consisting of humans and parrots, specifically the human artist duo Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger and their parrots Clara and Karl, who live and work together in Cologne, Germany. The photograph shows Clara shaping shredded newspapers into an artistic arrangement. Through their art, the collective aims to evoke the question if a revision of the concept of agency and interspecies art is necessary, to support an art world that includes nonhuman artists.
Visit the collective’s website here for more information.
Access
The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was designed to be downloaded in its entirety and read either as an eBook or on screen, both preferable in double page view. You can access a PDF of the full Journal via the first link in the overview below. It is also possible to download individual parts of the Journal, which you can find listed following the link to the full PDF.
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