Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories

Innovative study of animal art histories in modern art

Animal Modernities challenges the traditional human-centered focus of art history and explores how modern art, visual culture, and modernity itself emerge from relationships between humans and animals. The essays in this volume reveal histories of exploitation and domination, as well as confusion and ambivalence, and occasional moments when affinities between humans and animals have been embraced, and animal agency asserted and acknowledged. The authors collectively point to the importance of thinking about animal-human relations for addressing today’s ecological challenges.

Contributing authors: Niharika Dinkar (Boise State University), Katherine Fein (Amherst College), Annie Ronan (Virginia Tech), Michael Yonan (University of California, Davis), Alysia Garrison (Dartmouth College), Katie Hornstein (Dartmouth College), Daniel Harkett (Colby College), Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University), Sean Weiss (City College of New York), Catherine Girard (St. Francis Xavier College (Canada)), Rosalind (Roz) Hayes (University of Exeter), Emily Gephart (Tufts University), Maura Coughlin (Northeastern University), Laura Nuffer (Colby College), Nina Amstutz (University of Oregon), Stephanie Triplett (independent scholar)

Daniel Harkett is associate professor in the Department of Art at Colby College.

Katie Hornstein is professor of art history at Dartmouth College.