Trivent Publishing has recently published the first issue of the open-access journal Cheiron: the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. The first issue examines “the historiography of equine and equestrian studies, with contributions that reflect the vibrant research environment that encompasses equine history, archaeology and social sciences today.” For more information and to read the articles, visit https://trivent-publishing.eu/home/133-cheiron-vol-1issue-1.html.

Trivent is also sponsoring a series of equine-related virtual events. For a calendar of these and other events, follow this link.

The next Trivent event is “The Horse in Medieval Law,” this Thursday, Nov. 25, at 5pm CET/11am EST/8am PST. (Note that the date is incorrect on the Trivent page, but correct on the event’s Facebook page: https://fb.me/e/1QTqvBjSH.)

The event is free, but prior registration is required by clicking here.

From the organizers:

“The invited speakers are Marieke Röben, who is going to talk about Edictum Rothari (the Lombard law code), Andrew O’Donnghaile and Edgar Rops, who will discuss medieval Irish and Welsh law codes, respectively.

Marieke Röben studied German studies and History at the University of Oldenburg (Germany) and Södertörn University (Sweden), with a focus on early modern and medieval history. Since 2019, she is a research assistant and doctoral student under the supervision of Prof. Philippe Depreux at the University of Hamburg (Germany), researching the role of horses in early medieval society.

In his paper “Types and qualities of horses in early Irish law” Andrew Ó Donnghaile, who recently completed his doctorate at NUI Galway (Ireland), focusing on early Irish law, will delve into will delve into medieval Irish legal texts to examine various types of horses which existed in early medieval Ireland. This will include a look into the legal text Téchta eich (‘Proper qualities of a horse’), which details specific desired characteristics of horses.

Edgar Rops is Latvia-based independent researcher, whose research interest encompass medieval legal history, folklore and the history of magic. His study of horses in medieval Welsh and Anglo-Saxon law was published in The Horse in Premodern European Culture (https://www.degruyter.com/…/doi/10.1515/9781501513787/html).”

Online Event. Friday, February 12, 2021: noon-2pm EST/9am-11am PST

Join us for a roundtable exploring the history of horse breeding and modifications to horse’s bodies for sport and science!

Welcome! This upcoming Equine History Collective Roundtable invites experts in the field of equine studies to discuss modifications to the equine body as responses to culture, science, and medicine in the modern world.

Hosted by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (co-editors of Equestrian Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and The Discourse of Modernity and Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity and the Making of the Modern Horse), the roundtable asks contributors to reflect on their own work on the subject, comment on current issues in the field, and discuss future directions in research.

Invited speakers include: Richard Nash (Indiana University Bloomington), Karen Raber (University of Mississippi), Jeannette Vaught (Liberal Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cal State-LA) and Susanna Forrest (Author of The Age of the Horse).

To be able to access the event, you must register beforehand through Eventbrite.

Roundtable Speaker Bios:

Richard Nash is a scholar of Human Animal Studies and eighteenth century English culture, and is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. He is the author of numerous academic articles, including “‘Honest English Breed:’ The Thoroughbred as Cultural Metaphor,” in The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World (2004)–one of the landmark works that reinvigorated the field of equine history. He co-authored The Heath and the Horse: A History of Racing and Art on Newmarket Heath (2015), and his book Wild Enlightenment : The Borders of Human Identity in the Eighteenth Century (2003) won the Walker Cowen Book Prize. He is also past president of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts.

Karen Raber is a specialist in Renaissance literature with emphasis on ecostudies, animal studies, and posthumanist theory. Her monographs include Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture (U Penn 2013, a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award). She is also coeditor with Monica Mattfeld of Performing Animals: History, Agency, Theater (Penn State, 2017) and with Treva Tucker of The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline and Identity in the Early Modern World (Palgrave 2005). She is also editor of Routledge’s series Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture.

Jeanette Vaught researches the intersection of animals, science and culture, in a primarily equine context. She holds a PhD in American Studies and is a former equine veterinary technician. Her research articles include “How to Make a Horse Have an Orgasm,” in Living With Animals: Bonds Across Species, ed. Natalie Porter and Ilana Gershon, Cornell University Press (2018) and “A Question of Sex: Cloning, Culture, and Legitimacy Among American Quarter Horses,” Humanimalia (2018). She is also co-editor of the collection The Relational Arena: How Frameworks of Communication, Care, Politics, and Power Reveal and Conceal Equine Selves, forthcoming in the Human-Animal Series from Brill.  

Susanna Forrest is a writer, and author of The Age of the Horse (2017) and If Wishes Were Horses: A Memoir of Equine Obsession (2012). She has contributed articles to several edited volumes, including: “The New Equestrian Economy in China” in Equestrian Cultures in Global and Local Arenas, edited by Miriam Adelman and Kirrilly Thompson (Springer, 2018); “’Horsemeat is Certainly Delicious’: Anxiety, Xenophobia and Rationalism at a Nineteenth-Century American Hippophagic Banquet” in Equine Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, 1700–Present, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (University of Chicago Press, 2019); and “Inventing the Wild Horse: the Manmade History of the Takhi and Tarpan 1828-2018” in Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity and the Making of the Modern Horse, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Routledge, 2020).

Hosted by the Latvian Academy of Sport Education, August 24-27, 2020. Organized by Timothy Dawson and Anastasija Ropa.

For the past five years the International Mediaeval Congress at Leeds in the UK has hosted a series of sessions on horses and related animals and equestrian practices. The interruption in that flourishing tradition has offered the opportunity to break out of that temporal field and look at equestrian activities over a greater span of time and into the present.

Thus, this conference is devoted to discussing historical practices of horsemanship and equestrian sports, their emergence and evolution over centuries and into the present day. The speakers have been encouraged to consider the links between historical and current practices in horsemanship, and to inquire into possible tendencies and future developments in equestrian sports.

While in the past, equestrian sports often developed and were justified with a certain end in mind, for instance, as military practice, in this even the word sport is understood in the broadest sense, to include the connotations of play, leisurely and cultural activities, which are not necessarily practiced with a practical outcome in mind.

The participants include people who are not only scholars in the traditional sense, but also practitioners in a wide range of equestrian pursuits, and crafts people experienced in producing and replicating equestrian equipment, and some who combine all those aspects. The conference will, therefore, appeal to a wide audience who are interested in equestrian matters, offering not only rigorously researched food for thought to take away, but practical advice that might be of use to attendees.

A volume of articles based on selected papers will be published in the Rewriting Equestrian History Series by Trivent Medieval.

The conference will take place via Zoom. Attendance is free, but prior registration is required.  

For more information, including the conference program, please visit the conference website.