Event

History from the Dogsled: Animals, Climates, and the Stakes of Telling the Past
Dr. Bathsheba Demuth

In the nineteenth century, moving in the Arctic often meant working with dogs. Combining archives, fieldwork, oral histories, and animal behavioral sciences, this talk examines how something as seemingly unlikely as animal emotions helped shape the contours of the British and Russian empires as they attempted to colonize what is now Alaska. In doing so, the talk makes an argument for the stakes of reading the past for new kinds of subjectivity, affect, and action—for new definitions of what and who counts as part of how history is made.

College Hall 209
3pm Reception
4pm Lecture