Transgressive Beasts Workshop 2022

‘Transgressive Beasts: Animals Challenging Boundaries in Chinese History’, an online workshop jointly organised by the University of Cambridge and Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, brought together scholars from around the world to discuss the liminality of animality.

One crucial aspect of human-animal relations in Chinese history is that of boundaries. The human-animal relationship immediately crosses a species threshold and, as recent events have shown, this is not necessarily just a source of companionship but can also induce the exchange of disease and pathogens. Equally, humans re-define spaces like the home or frontiers based on the animals residing there, and even re-formulate what it is to be human in light of real and imagined interactions with animals.

On 8th – 9th August 2022, we invited participants to discuss transgressions of boundaries in dynastic and contemporary China. The talks, as noted below, explored topics as varied as animals in dreams, shape-shifting canines, insects in art, tattooed animals, and human/veterinary medicine.

Panel 1: Animal Allegories and Imagery

Rebecca Doran (University of Miami)
Animals, Dreams, and Altered States in Medieval Narratives

Anne Schmiedl (Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg)
From Hunted Prey to Symbols of Life: Historical and Mythological Rabbits in China and Japan

Raffaela Rettinger (Julius-Maximilians-University)
How To Earn Your Stripes: The Practice of Tattooing Animal Motifs on Human Skin and Its Social Implications in Ancient and Premodern China

Panel 2: Defining Animals

Kelsey Granger (University of Cambridge)
‘Without a Dog to Bark at Night in Warning’: Dogs in the Creation and Patrolling of Boundaries

Stuart Young (Bucknell University)
Silkworm-Human Relations in Middle Period Chinese Buddhism

Daniel Burton-Rose (Wake Forest University)
Crawling Across Representational Mediums and Taxonomic Classifications: Insect Subjects in 16th century Paintings, Manuscripts, and Printed Books

Panel 3: Animal Husbandry and Administration

Noa Grass (Independent Scholar)
The Frontier is Here: Horses and Horse Culture in the Early Ming Court

Shih-hsun Liu (National Palace Museum)
Food, Medicine, and Law: Eating Donkeys in Chinese Society from Medieval China to the Qing Dynasty

Chunghao Kuo (Taipei Medical University)
The Voyages of Eels: The Characteristics, Breeding Evolution, and Consumption of Eels in Modern Taiwan

Panel 4: Treating Animals

Renée Krusche (Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Livestock – Part of More Than One World: Veterinary Approaches to Livestock in Republican China

Forrest McSweeney (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Military Medicine and the Causational Feedback Loop between Animal and Human Institutional Medicine in Imperial China

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