Embodying Empire Through Captivity

Three decades of scholarship in historical and geographical animal studies often simply place the non-human alongside people of marginalized identities. This framing, however, neglects ways in which human-animal relationships are deeply entangled with human politics and identities. In this talk Dawn Biehler uses the historical geography of animal exhibits in Manhattan, especially Central Park, to show how captive animals torn from their habitats, and Indigenous cultural and livelihood systems, came to embody empire and domination within urban space. She also examines how people of marginalized identities struggled for access to animal exhibits.

Speaker bio: Dawn Biehler is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is author of Pests in the City: Flies, Bed Bugs, Cockroaches, and Rats (University of Washington Press, 2013). She is currently completing two major projects: a six-year collaborative study of environmental justice and mosquito ecology in West Baltimore and book about the historical geography of human justice, urban environmentalism, and multi-species belonging in New York’s Central Park.

Photo by Marlayna Demond '11

[Image description: Dawn Biehler at the camera. She has short blond hair and is wearing a red button-up shirt with a black blazer over top.]