We will examine how animals – dead and alive – have been collected, transported, classified, processed, used, understood, and displayed at different times. Presenting shared concerns around the politicization, datafication, and commodification of animals (or animal parts) the lectures will offer an extended understanding of agents, institutions, and infrastructures as human/non-human co-productions. Researchers from contemporary history, the history of science, cultural anthropology, cultural studies as well as environmental history and political theory will explore specific encounters between animal bodies, knowledge practices and material cultures in different local and global settings spanning from colonial times to the present day. By investigating how animals and their environments are imagined, studied and managed, the RVL demonstrates how these processes co-shape institutions, infrastructures, and politics. In what ways have animals been used, studied, and classified as objects? What has historically been made to count as an animal and what role do they play in signifying human socialities, just as much as the natural world?

The Ringvorlesung invites to engage in the work of historicizing ‘naturalized’ views, of investigating the politics of care and the economics of conservation, and of challenging a static notion of animals as ‘objects’. It offers conceptual tools and historical contexts for critically interrogating traditional meanings, images and narratives of animals.

The Ringvorlesung draws from two current research clusters and their extended network:
the research project “Animals as Objects: Zoological Gardens and the Natural History Museum Berlin, 1810 to 2020” between Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin; Zoologischer Garten Berlin AG;
and the research theme “The Body of Animals” Department III at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

The Ringvorlesung is free and open to all. Please register by emailing Gloria.Baur@mfn.berlin to receive the Zoom link, and further technical information.