CONGRESS CANCELED Impound, Outlaw

Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

Description

With the animal turn, analysis of medieval interactions between humans and animals has shifted from considering animals as mere symbols or resources -- readings that have largely reinforced a perceived human-animal boundary in the Middle Ages -- to consider a broad range of medieval beliefs, values, and practices that complicate, blur, and even dissolve this boundary. One recent and particularly fruitful line of scholarship has considered vulnerability as a shared condition with the power to transcend this boundary. This panel explores imprisonment and ambiguous political/legal standing as conditions which can mutually inform and, in some cases, unite the human and non-human experience in the Middle Ages and beyond. Anna Siebach-Larsen

 
May 9th, 10:00 AM

CONGRESS CANCELED Impound, Outlaw

Schneider 1335

With the animal turn, analysis of medieval interactions between humans and animals has shifted from considering animals as mere symbols or resources -- readings that have largely reinforced a perceived human-animal boundary in the Middle Ages -- to consider a broad range of medieval beliefs, values, and practices that complicate, blur, and even dissolve this boundary. One recent and particularly fruitful line of scholarship has considered vulnerability as a shared condition with the power to transcend this boundary. This panel explores imprisonment and ambiguous political/legal standing as conditions which can mutually inform and, in some cases, unite the human and non-human experience in the Middle Ages and beyond. Anna Siebach-Larsen