Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History (Canadian History and Environment)

Leading scholars in animal history confront key questions of how we can know and understand the more-than-human past, showcasing the innovative methods historians use to discover and explain how animals fit into our collective histories. Understanding the relationships between humans and animals is essential to a full understanding of both our present and our shared past. Across the humanities and social sciences, researchers have embraced the animal turn, a multispecies approach to scholarship, with historians at the forefront of new research in human-animal studies that blends traditional research methods with interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks that decenter humans in historical narratives. These exciting approaches come with core methodological challenges for scholars seeking to better understand the past from non-anthropocentric perspectives. Whether in a large public archive, a small private collection, or the oral histories of living memories, stories of animals are mediated by the humans who have inscribed the records and organized archival collections. In oral histories, the place of animals in the past are further refracted by the frailty of human memory and recollection. Only traces remain for researchers to read and interpret. Bringing together seventeen original essays by a leading group of international scholars, Traces of the Animal Past showcases the innovative methods historians use to unearth and explain how animals fit into our collective histories. Situating the historian within the narrative, bringing transparency to methodological processes, and reflecting on the processes and procedures of current research, this book presents new approaches and new directions for a maturing field of historical inquiry. With Contributions By: Jennifer Bonnell, Colleen Campbell, Jason Colby, George Colpitts, J. Keri Cronin, Joanna Dean, Jody Hodgins, Dolly Jrgensen, Sean Kheraj, Tina Loo, Lindsay Stallones Marshall, Catherine McNeur, Susan Nance, Harriet Ritvo, Andrew Robichaud, Nigel Rothfels, Sandra Swart, Emily Wakild, and Jay Young "Leading scholars in animal history confront key questions of how we can know and understand the more-than-human past, showcasing the innovative methods historians use to discover and explain how animals fit into our collective histories. Understanding the relationships between humans and animals is essential to a full understanding of both our present and our shared past. Across the humanities and social sciences, researchers have embraced the 'animal turn,' a multispecies approach to scholarship, with historians at the forefront of new research in human-animal studies that blends traditional research methods with interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks that decenter humans in historical narratives. These exciting approaches come with core methodological challenges for scholars seeking to better understand the past from non-anthropocentric perspectives. Whether in a large public archive, a small private collection, or the oral histories of living memories, stories of animals are mediated by the humans who have inscribed the records and organized archival collections. In oral histories, the place of animals in the past are further refracted by the frailty of human memory and recollection. Only traces remain for researchers to read and interpret. Bringing together seventeen original essays by a leading group of international scholars, Traces of the Animal Past showcases the innovative methods historians use to unearth and explain how animals fit into our collective histories. Situating the historian within the narrative, bringing transparency to methodological processes, and reflecting on the processes and procedures of current research, this book presents new approaches and new directions for a maturing field of historical inquiry."-- Provided by publisher Front Cover Half Title Page Series Page Full Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction: Traces of the Animal Past PART I: Embodied Histories 1 | Kicking over the Traces?Freeing the Animal from the Archive 2 | Occupational Hazards: Honeybee Labour as an Interpretive Device in Animal History 3 | Hearing History through Hoofbeats: Exploring Equine Volition and Voice in the Archive PART II:Traces 4 | Who is a Greyhound?Reflections on the Non-Human Digital Archive 5 | Accessing Animal Health Knowledge: Popular Educators and Veterinary Science in Rural Ontario 6 | Animal Cruelty, Metaphoric Narrative, and the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1919–1939 PART III:The Unknowable Animal 7 | Vanishing Flies and the Lady Entomologist 8 | Guinea Pig Agnotology 9 | Tuffy’s Cold War: Science, Memory, and the US Navy’s Dolphin 10 | The Elephant in the Archive PART IV: Spatial Sources and Animal Movement 11 | Making Tracks: A Grizzly and Entangled History 12 | Spatial Analysis and Digital Urban Animal History 13 | Visualizing the Animal City: Digital Experiments in Animal History 14 | What’s a Guanaco? Tracing the Llama Diaspora through and beyond South America PART V: Looking at Animals 15 | Hidden in Plain Sight: How Art and Visual Culture Can Help Us Think about Animal Histories 16 | Creatures on Display: Making an Animal Exhibitat the Archives of Ontario 17 | Portraits of Extinction: Encountering Bluebuck Narratives in the Natural History Museum Epilogue: Combinations and Conjunction Contributors Index Back Cover