How much information can be extracted from a small 19th century news item about a wolf? The theoretical discussions within human-animal studies provide us with the incentive to ascribe agency to animals. The problem is finding adequate methods to do so, especially within history. Animals neither speak nor write, and the traces they leave in historical sources are scarce and difficult to understand. The question remains how it is possible for the historian to interpret agency which is not articulated in the sources.

In this talk, Karin Dirke will argue that by contextualizing sources creatively and not interpreting them in a prefixed way, the historian can approach animal agency in history. She will discuss how different contextualizations change the interpretation and suggest a method to access animal agency in historical sources.

About the speaker
Karin Dirke is an associate professor in History of Ideas at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Her work mainly concerns different aspects of human/animal-studies and she has published a number of works within the field.

She is a co-founder of the Environmental Humanities Network at Stockholm University and from 2018, in collaboration with environmental humanities-colleagues, she runs the new research school in Environmental Humanities there.

Join the meeting
This seminar will be held online via Zoom. Please use this link to join the meeting: https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/66129417169