- Do Whales Judge Us?: Interspecies History and Ethics
- A talk by Dr. Bathsheba Demuth
- October 14, 2021 4:00-5:30PM
- Registration Link
- Bowhead whales have been known to three groups along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: Indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. Each imagined different normative relationships with whales, tied to visions of time, history, and the future. This talk explores how those ideas shaped interactions between human hunters and whales, and what we can discern of whales' own adaptations and— perhaps—ethical responses to their pursuers.
Bathsheba Demuth
Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society
Brown University- Bio: Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian, specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when she was 18 and moved north of the Arctic Circle in the Yukon. Since then, she has lived in and studied Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in the how the histories of people, ideas, places, and non-human species intersect.
- Speaker Link
Flyer for
Do Whales Judge Us?Hosted by the Cultural Analysis Working Group "Technopolitical Natures,” with co-sponsorship from the Departments of History and Geography.
