CONGRESS CANCELED Treating Animals: Veterinary Science in the Middle Ages
Description
Medieval animal studies has tended to privilege literary and encyclopedic texts, viewing animals within Aristotelian hierarchies of rationality, while research on animals in medieval medicine has focused on their use as ingredients, rather than their potential status as patients. There have been few discussions of animals and humans in relationships of care, or of animals as the recipients of medical treatment. In this panel, we seek to expand these conversations by centering veterinary medicine, including treatment manuals (e.g., hawking handbooks), literary representations of veterinary practices (e.g., romance heroes caring for horses), and other genres that concern the (un)ethical, (il)legal, or (im)proper treatment, training, or keeping of animals. In light of the ongoing Anthropocene extinction, we believe that medieval veterinary texts and allied genres can contribute to the urgent philosophical project of decentering the human, enabling us to describe relationships of mutual benefit between humans and animals in this period, and to cultivate more ethical perspectives today. Anne V. Aylin Malcolm
CONGRESS CANCELED Treating Animals: Veterinary Science in the Middle Ages
Fetzer 2030
Medieval animal studies has tended to privilege literary and encyclopedic texts, viewing animals within Aristotelian hierarchies of rationality, while research on animals in medieval medicine has focused on their use as ingredients, rather than their potential status as patients. There have been few discussions of animals and humans in relationships of care, or of animals as the recipients of medical treatment. In this panel, we seek to expand these conversations by centering veterinary medicine, including treatment manuals (e.g., hawking handbooks), literary representations of veterinary practices (e.g., romance heroes caring for horses), and other genres that concern the (un)ethical, (il)legal, or (im)proper treatment, training, or keeping of animals. In light of the ongoing Anthropocene extinction, we believe that medieval veterinary texts and allied genres can contribute to the urgent philosophical project of decentering the human, enabling us to describe relationships of mutual benefit between humans and animals in this period, and to cultivate more ethical perspectives today. Anne V. Aylin Malcolm