EIHS Workshop: Scales of Movement: Beyond Humans and the Problem of Agency

Inspired by Bathsheba Demuth's work, this workshop builds a broader environmental and ecological context around narratives of home, exile, and migration: one that shows humans as well as states operating in a larger, multifaceted ecology of agency. Our four panelists will explore the movement and management of dolphins, minerals, cattle, and wheat as they trace the ways in which the material and the beyond-human circumscribe the agencies of humans as they enact their own. As they go beyond the “human” in our search for historical actors, this panel will also consider how this shift in understanding who is able to exert historical agency may also necessitate a shift in scale and methodology.

Panelists:
Grant Halliday (Graduate Student, History, University of Michigan)
Ismael Pardo (Graduate Student, History, University of Michigan)
Qingyi Zeng (Graduate Student, Comparative Literature, University of Michigan)
Yipeng Zhou (Graduate Student, History, University of Michigan)
Douglas Northrop (Professor; History, Middle East Studies; University of Michigan; moderator)

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.