“Baltic Human-Animal Histories” Published

“Baltic Human-Animal Histories"

AABS is delighted to announce the award of a Book Publication Subvention to Peter Lang Publishing USA for publishing “Baltic Human-Animal Histories: Relations, Trading, and Representations from an Entangled Perspective.”

The volume, edited by Linda Kaljundi, Anu Mänd, Kadri Tüür, and Ulrike Plath, explores the perspectives of integrating the study of Baltic history and other branches of Baltic humanities more closely with the field of interdisciplinary human-animal studies.

Read more about the book here, and keep an eye out for its publication notice! 

Peter Lang Publishers awarded a 2022 AABS Book Publication Subvention

The AABS Board is pleased to announce that Peter Lang Publishers has been awarded the AABS Book Publication Subvention for publishing “Baltic Human-Animal Histories: Relations, Trading, and Representations from an Entangled Perspective.” The volume, edited by Linda Kaljundi, Anu Mänd, Kadri Tüür, and Ulrike Plath, explores the perspectives of integrating the study of Baltic history and other branches of Baltic humanities more closely with the field of interdisciplinary human-animal studies.

Linda Kaljundi (PhD) is a professor of cultural history at the Estonian Academy of Arts and a senior research fellow at Tallinn University. She specialises in Baltic history and historiography, as well as cultural memory studies and environmental history. Kaljundi has edited collections of articles on medieval and early modern history writing, as well as on Baltic historical fiction, images of history and scientific illlustration, including „Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia“ (with Marek Tamm and Carsten Selch Jensen, Ashgate 2011), „Novels, Histories, and Novel Nations: Historical Fiction and Cultural Memory in Finland and Estonia“ (with Eneken Laanes and Ilona Pikkanen, Finnish Literature Society 2015), and „Re-forming Texts, Music, and Church Art in the Early Modern North“ (with Tuomas M.S. Lehtonen, Amsterdam University Press, 2016).

Book Summary

Animals are newcomers in Baltic history writing. Their slow, but steady bioinvasion into the habitat of Baltic historians started only at the end of the last millennium. In this edited volume, we explore the perspectives of integrating the study of Baltic history and other branches of Baltic humanities more closely with the field of interdisciplinary human-animal studies. Investigating historical entanglements between human and more-than-human animals from the pre-Christian period to the Soviet times and covering a wide range of different species, the volume demonstrates new ways of narrating and studying Baltic history.

In doing so, the editors and authors of this volume use – but also aim to develop further – the competence of Baltic historical studies and humanities in transnational and entangled research. During the last decades, historians, art historians, literary scholars and other humanities researchers have demonstrated the importance of analyzing Baltic history from multiple perspectives. They have focused on the entanglements of different ethnic, social, and other groups in Baltic history, as well as pointed out close and complex relations between the cultural imaginaries and memories of those groups.

Coming from a highly transnational and transdisciplinary tradition of studying cultural and environmental history and humanities, our aim is to open up this entangled and transnational approach to Baltic history and culture to a closer analysis of interspecies’ entanglements. Taking the interrelatedness of species as given, we do not depart from classifying animals according to their relation to their human co-mates (i.e. wild animals, livestock, pets), but we focus on different forms of entanglements and their representations in literary, material, visual and other sources of Baltic history.

The contributions in this volume are organized on a thematic basis, featuring studies of animals in relation to human activities and practices; animals as trade objects; and the visual representations of animals. These three forms of entanglements fit best with our articles that have a strong focus on medieval and early modern times. Covering a time period of around one thousand years, the chapters also enable us to discuss continuity and change in Baltic human-animal history over extended periods.

Although this book is not a monograph, but an edited volume, its chapters are the result of a long collaboration that has included seminars, workshops, as well as sharing peer feedback on written manuscripts. Being conscious of the novelty of non-human animals as a subject of Baltic history, our authors have all been inspired by and much dedicated to the joint experiment of sketching an entirely new research field and perspective on Baltic history.

The authors of the book are leading Baltic historians (Stefan Donecker, Inna Jürjo, Linda Kaljundi, Juhan Kreem, Ivar Leimus, Ulrike Plath), art historians (Jaanika Anderson, Hilkka Hiiop, Anu Mänd), archaeologists (Tõnno Jonuks, Lembi Lõugas, Eve Rannamäe), semioticians (Kadri Tüür), geographers (Anita Zariņa, Dārta Treija and Ivo Vinogradovs), classical philologists (Kaarina Rein) and theologians (Meelis Friedenthal).

Hence we strongly believe that this edited volume makes a remarkable and a unique contribution to the field of Baltic Studies. It is highly interdisciplinary and gives a compact overview of the state of animal studies in different fields of Baltic humanities. Speaking about Baltic history from a more-than-human perspective enables us to envisage novel periodization and to address highly transnational questions which have not been asked before. It also associates the humanities to natural sciences and biology more directly than before, and enables new transdisciplinary research perspectives in the future.

What is the AABS Book Publication Subvention?

The AABS awards its Book Publication Subvention of up to $5,000 for individually authored books, edited volumes, and multiple-authored books in English that make a substantial scholarly contribution to Baltic Studies. The applications must be submitted by publishers, not authors. Priority will be given to single author’s first monographs.
AABS awards two Book Publication Subventions each year. Applications may be submitted for review anytime, on a rolling basis.

 

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Posted by Andres Lõo
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