Presented By: Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies
LRCCS Interdisciplinary Workshop | Multispecies History of Modern China: Risks and Rewards
Peter Braden, LRCCS Postdoctoral Fellow
Please register for this workshop at https://myumi.ch/8ezeM
Human-centered histories of science, gender, labor, and imperialism in modern China have overlooked the agency and subjectivity of animals. Dr. Braden encourages historians to see Chinese society as a multispecies formation of intelligent beings who lived, worked, and died together. By reading documents generated by humans who interacted with animals alongside current scientific and veterinary literature, historians can attempt to understand the inner lives and experiences of animals who left no written records. In today's workshop, he will discuss his first book project, on the lives of cattle in China during the military, economic, and technological upheavals of the mid-twentieth century. He will also introduce his second project, on the roles and experiences of rodents in the making of the life sciences in modern China. These projects show how decades of state violence and economic turmoil affected the social bonds, diets, medical care, labor, sexuality, and death of sentient animals including, but not limited to, Homo sapiens.
Peter Braden is a research fellow at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is a historian whose research interests include environmental history, science and technology studies, and animal studies. His first book manuscript is titled Serve the People: Bovine Experiences in China's Civil War and Revolution, 1935-1961. Peter will use his time at the LRCCS to publish his first book and to develop his second monograph, Collateral Killing: Humans, Rodents, and Plague in Inner Mongolia and Beyond, 1945-1970. Before joining the LRCCS, he received his doctorate in history from the University of California-San Diego, and completed an An Wang postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Human-centered histories of science, gender, labor, and imperialism in modern China have overlooked the agency and subjectivity of animals. Dr. Braden encourages historians to see Chinese society as a multispecies formation of intelligent beings who lived, worked, and died together. By reading documents generated by humans who interacted with animals alongside current scientific and veterinary literature, historians can attempt to understand the inner lives and experiences of animals who left no written records. In today's workshop, he will discuss his first book project, on the lives of cattle in China during the military, economic, and technological upheavals of the mid-twentieth century. He will also introduce his second project, on the roles and experiences of rodents in the making of the life sciences in modern China. These projects show how decades of state violence and economic turmoil affected the social bonds, diets, medical care, labor, sexuality, and death of sentient animals including, but not limited to, Homo sapiens.
Peter Braden is a research fellow at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He is a historian whose research interests include environmental history, science and technology studies, and animal studies. His first book manuscript is titled Serve the People: Bovine Experiences in China's Civil War and Revolution, 1935-1961. Peter will use his time at the LRCCS to publish his first book and to develop his second monograph, Collateral Killing: Humans, Rodents, and Plague in Inner Mongolia and Beyond, 1945-1970. Before joining the LRCCS, he received his doctorate in history from the University of California-San Diego, and completed an An Wang postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
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