This past spring, the EHC launched a new initiative to sponsor seminars. We are excited to announce the seminars for the upcoming year! These explore a subject of shared concern related to equine history, theory, and methods. Seminar leaders will guide their group of discussants in developing an end product, such as an article, a list of resources, an exhibit, or a new collaborative project. Each group will present its progress at the annual EHC conference in the spring.
Apply now to be part of an EHC Seminar! The seminar organizers are now accepting applications from anyone who would like to participate in them. The general topic of each seminar is described below. For more information about each seminar, how to apply, and the contact information of the organizers, please click on the links below.
Equine Breeds: The Thoroughbred
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Organizers: Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld
Application deadline: Oct. 15
The history of the Thoroughbred is generally well known. The breed’s story can be found in a plethora of popular histories that focus on specific famous racehorses, local histories of the turf, or general overviews of the breed’s history, and in excellent work from scholars such as Donna Landry, Richard Nash, and Rebecca Cassidy. Explored in relation to national rhetoric, political scandal, sport history, breeding practices, biography, race, and breed registries, the Thoroughbred is arguably the most studied equine breed in history. However, there are still some large questions associated with the development of the breed and its role in the history of ‘breed’ itself during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, the place of the Thoroughbred within the shift from landrace breeding to pedigree breeding at the end of the eighteenth century is well established, but how far back this history stretches is a question that is still understudied. Similarly, once pedigree, and its associations with breed purity, developed in relation to the British Thoroughbred, how these impact Thoroughbred breeding in Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world is radically understudied. What happens to the Thoroughbred’s associations with British national identity, purity, and ‘blood’ in the context of empire and colonialism? How do the discourses, associations, and practices of ‘Thoroughbred’ and ‘Breed’ change from the early modern period to the present?
Archaeology for Historians, History for Archaeologists: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches in Human-Equid Studies
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Organizers: Helene Benkert, Katherine Kanne, Kim Chun Ho, and Camille Mai Lan Vo Van Qui
Application deadline: Nov. 1
The study of human-equid relationships of the past is inherently cross-disciplinary, drawing on archaeology, history, art history, animal studies, anthropology, equine science, equitation science and more. Archaeologists and historians increasingly borrow from each other, but may lack specialist disciplinary knowledge and key aspects of each other’s research methods and theory. In this seminar, we wish to increase knowledge and collaboration between archaeologists, historians, and scholars in other disciplines by considering the ways in which we can benefit one another by working together, sharing approaches, data, and sources. For scholars researching the same period in history there is obvious overlap, but there is also much to be gained by examining the human-equid relationship in the longue durée, with comparative materials from different times.