Dimarts 13 de febrer de 2024 a les 12 hores, sala de reunions, pis segon, Palau Cerveró

Seminari: Coat Colour, Disease, and Character. An Animal-Historical Perspective on Race, Domestication and Discrimination in Late Medieval Spain

Seminari impartit per Isabelle Schürch (University of Bern), Ajudes Biblioteca Vicent Peset Llorca

Resum:

In this seminar we want to explore medieval connections between equine health regimes, coat colors, characters and the concept of «raça». The talk delves into animal-historical perspectives on horse care, reproduction, breeding, and evaluations of different horse types. The talk wants to highlight the complexity of medieval veterinary texts, emphasizing that they are more than just records of diseases and treatments. Instead, they serve as spaces for contemplating domestication, «civilisation», the nature of bodies and health as well as «care» – and the consequences of interventions on both corporal and mental aspects of horses. Moreover, the talk will also explore the societal relevance of the term «raça», linking practices such as curing and breeding with thinking about «essentialised» differences and forms of discrimination.

BIO

Isabelle Schürch has been a senior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Medieval History at the University of Bern since 2018. After completing her doctorate as part of the National Centre of Competence in Research "NCCR Mediality" in Zurich, she was a research assistant in Rudolf Schlögl's Reinhart Koselleck project " Socialisation among the Present" in Constance (Germany) from 2015 to 2018. From 2020 to 2021, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the history of mediality, late medieval practices of domination and social history. She is currently working on a book that deals with historical approaches to human-nonhuman animal relationships and the making of a late medieval companion animal, i.e. the noble riding horse.

DURADA: 90 MIN