Inventing Animals - Inventing Humans

Animals did not exist at the start of the Middle Ages. Pigs, birds, cattle, bears, weasels, and rabbits did.  Inventing the idea of ‘the animal’ happened over the later Middle Ages. It did not simply create a fracture between humans and the rest of the world. It also created a second split, less visible and more intimate, which gave every individual an ‘animal side’. Inventing animals meant inventing humans too.

Pierre-Olivier Dittmar’s L’invention de l’animal. Essai d’anthropologie médiévale (Gallimard, 2026) charts these important European developments through history, religion, art history, archaeology and anthropology. This interdisciplinary seminar will explore this with a range of UCL experts from different fields. The seminar will be in English.

Pierre-Olivier will present project as a whole but we will be primarily be discussing section III ‘Dévorations’ for those who would like to read it in advance. 

Speakers: Pierre-Olivier Dittmar (EHESS) Jane Gilbert (UCL SELCS-CMII), Mariam Motamedi-Fraser (UCL Geography), Bob Mills (UCL History of Art), Sophie Page (UCL History), John Sabapathy (UCL History)

Details: 1 June, 13:45–17:00, Moot Court, Bentham House. To attend please contact John Sabapathy (j.sabapathy@ucl.ac.uk)

Image: Bibliothèque municipale Verdun, MS 107