Susan McHugh presents keynote at international conference in Germany

Susan McHugh, Ph.D., professor and chair in the Department of English, delivered the keynote lecture at the international conference “Animal Biographies: Recovering Animal Selfhood through Interdisciplinary Narration,” which convened at the University of Kassel in Germany March 9-11, 2016.

McHugh’s lecture, titled “Taxidermy’s Literary Biographies,” focused on the storied nature of mounted skins. According to McHugh, historians who write them are quick to note that, akin to animal biography, the bios of taxidermy concern stories of the relations between species. What is not so clear in historical accounts, however, is how a creature made into a realistically lifelike animal-shaped object is made to conceal its own function as a site of struggle over stories, and with what related consequences for vulnerable living bodies. 

McHugh identified how, in novels and short stories, it is increasingly the case that certain specimens are presented as records of a deadly discursive conflation of animality and aboriginality that in turn makes many more bodies appear to be primitive, wild and, perhaps most importantly, vanishing.

The conference was attended by more than 100 scholars and speakers who represented eight different countries. It was made possible by the generous support of the German Research Foundation and the Human-Animal-Society Program at the University of Kassel.