Essay Collection - Equestrian Cultures, 1700-present

edited collection

Pictured in wonderfully textured shades of sepia, the horses of Roberto Dutesco's photographic Sable Island series are beautiful, larger than life, and undeniably Other. They come alive on the walls of urban art galleries, and in doing so they both reaffirm and unsettle our conceptions of what it means to be 'horse'. Liminally situated between rural and urban, domestic and wild, aesthetic object and independent subject, Dutesco's Sable Island horses are both eminently real beings with their own experiences of worlding, and representations that speak to Western, hegemonic discourses of the nonhuman. What is 'horse'? How have they been represented within literature and the arts? What is their relationship to humans, and how has their presence altered human society over time? These questions, along with the complex instability of the equine nonhuman, are the subject of this essay collection. We invite papers that explore the role and representation of horses in human culture from 1700 to the present in a wide array of geographies and contexts, and from multiple disciplinary perspectives within the humanities. Papers that explore horses in non-Anglocentric equestrian cultures are especially welcome.

Possible paper subjects can include, but are not limited to, the following:
- equestrian art and/or literature
- representation vs. real
- equine and equestrian identity
- equine and equestrian gender
- equine labour (urban and agricultural)
- commodity vs pet
- eating (or not)
- equestrian spaces
- equestrian technology
- human-animal co-becomings
- subject/object dichotomies
- performance and drama
- training methodologies
- equestrian epistemologies and language
- empire and (post)colonialism
- war horse
- breeders, farriers and veterinarians

Please send abstracts of not more than 300 words to Kristen Guest (kristen.guestunbc.ca) or Monica Mattfeld (monica.mattfeldunbc.ca) by February 28, 2015.