About the event
Isn’t the hair on our heads the most human thing there is? Sarah-Maria Schober (University of Zurich, Switzerland) discusses the potentials of a multispecies view of early modern hair, its intricate entanglements with the animal and plant world, and the historical processes that led to the denial and invisibilization of these links. The braids to be reconnected range from goatshair wigs to starch powder, from lice to the idea of hair roots, from animals to humans, from plants to layers of skin, from animacy to objectification. The dire separations of these hairy strands came to characterize hair in an age of speciesism and racialization. “On Human Heads” asks how a history of hair and its racialization can be informed by multispecies approaches and how this, in turn, might open up new discussions about the application and applicability of multispecies thought in the humanities.
About the presenter
Dr. Sarah-Maria Schober is a senior lecturer of early modern history at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. In her forthcoming book The Civet Cat: Producing Exotica in Early Modern Europe, she is researching the history of the scent and material civet, and its producer, the civet cat. Schober works also on human remains, especially hair, and commoditization and writes on topics such as global resources, commodity knowledge, disgust, or the nature-culture dichotomy. Her book on early modern urban societies, physicians and the social value of excess has been published in 2019 (Gesellschaft im Exzess: Mediziner in Basel um 1600, Campus). She starts a new project at the University of Lucerne in September 2025 entitled Matter of Distinction: Early Modern Hair, Race, Trade and Multispecies History, 1650–1820.
Readings
Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, Ursula Münster, "Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness," in: Environmental Humanities 8:1 (2016), 1–23.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Minneapolis 2013, ix-10.