Between Thursday 25th – Saturday 27th April 2019 a two and half day international conference Maritime Animals: Telling Stories of animals at sea will be held at the National Maritime Museum (part of the UNESCO world heritage site of Greenwich) London.
The programme explores all aspects of animal involvement and engagement in aspects of maritime exploration and voyaging. There are papers from both academics and independent researchers from all over the world, with keynote papers from Thom van Dooren and William Gervase Clarence-Smith.
Thom van Dooren’s paper will be on Voyaging with Snails: Stories from Hawai’i and William Gervase Clarence-Smith’s on the Saturday is titled “From Sail to Steam: the Maritime Transport of Equids and other animals“.
Below is the programme so you can see all the different subjects and speakers. I will be presenting a paper on Friday 26th, which is a tiny aspect of my research of the last four years into visual evidence in western illuminated manuscripts and paintings of global trade during the medieval period.
In addition to the various fascinating speakers and papers, there is a reception at the Queen’s House on the Thursday evening, which is where the newly conserved Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I hangs. This will give the delegates a chance to meet the speakers. I understand that a conference dinner is planned for the Friday night – venue &£ to be announced.
If you want to book for the whole conference (cost £100 for all days) then click the link on the museum’s event page above, but there is an option if you only fancy attending only for one or two days. The cost to attend just on Thursday is £30 and each of the two following days – £35 per day. To book to attend one or two days, please phone Lizelle de Jager on +44 (0)20 8312 6716.
This is the link to the conference webpage, which also gives you links to The Queen’s House, the Royal Observatory and the Cutty Sark – all accessible from this fabulous venue. https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/exhibitions-events/maritime-animals-telling-stories
I hope some of you will be able to attend as this promises to be an exciting and diverse conference.
Conference Programme: 25-27 April 2019. Venue: National Maritime Museum
Maritime Animals: Telling Stories of Animals at Sea.
Day 1 (April 25)
12:00 -12:45 Arrival and Registration
12:45-14:30 Welcome and the first session:
Animal Companions
- Cindy Mccreery (University of Sydney), A Parrot in every Port: animals ashore and aboard the Flying Squadron, 1869-70
- Gillian Dooley (Flinders University), ‘The sporting, affectionate, and useful companion of my voyages’: Matthew Flinders and Trim
- Lynette Russell (Monash University) and David Haworth (Monash University), Whaling Ships and Galapagos Tortoises: From Food Sources, to Ship Mates, to Family Pets
- Patricia Sullivan (Museum of Maritime Pets), Maritime Animals at Work
14:30-15:00 Coffee and tea
15:00-16:30
Panel 1: Postcolonial Animals
- Felix Schürmann (Forschungszentrum Gotha der Universität Erfurt), The Ship Transport and Conservation Introduction of Chimpanzees to Rubondo Island (1966): Politics for and through Animals in the Decolonization of East Africa
- Aaron Jaffer (NMM), Mad dogs, Englishmen and Lascars: Animals and Indian Ocean Seafaring
- Sari Mäenpää (Maritime Centre Forum Marinum): ‘To kill an albatross is unlucky’: Finnish sailors and wildlife aboard the last windjammers in the early 20th century
- Roger S. Wotton (UCL), Ships and Mythical animals
Panel 2 Mythic Animals
- Cristina Brito (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Humans, marine animals and in-betweens: Travelling from early modern seas to contemporary oceans
- Marjolein Zijlstra-Mondt (University of Leiden), Mapping The Sea-Unicorn:Sea-Unicorns in Word and Image in The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
16:30-18:30 Animal Encounters
- Stephen R. Berry (Simmons College), The Wonders of the Deep: Eighteenth Century Encounters with Oceanic Wildlife
- John McAleer (University of Southampton), ‘As pretty a thing as I have ever seen’: Animal encounters and Atlantic voyages in the Age of Sail
- Diana L Ahmad (Missouri University of Science and Technology), Sharks,Whales, and Gobies: Travellers’ Observations of Sea Life on the Journey through the South Seas, 1880s-1910s
- Keith Moser (Mississippi State University), Rethinking Language Within the Larger Biosemiosic Web of Communication Through Maritime Encounters in Michel Serres’s Late Philosophy
Wine reception
Day 2 (April 26)
9:00-9:30 Welcome coffee/tea
09:30-11.00
Panel 1: Polar Animal Expeditions
- Lea Edgar (Vancouver Maritime Museum), Beloved member of our team: the sled dogs of the St. Roch
- Robert McCracken Peck (Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), Animals Engaged in the Search for Sir John Franklin
- Cam Sharp Jones (British Library), A grog drinking penguin and a pet opossum:Animals on Joseph Dalton Hooker’s expedition to Antarctica
Panel 2: Zoos at Sea
- Herman Reichenbach, Wild Cargo: A century of shipping animals at Carl Hagenbeck, Hamburg, 1848-1955
- Sue Diamond (University of Portsmouth), The Sailor Zoo and Animal Husbandry on Whale Island Portsmouth 1895-1940
- Andrea Ringer (Tennessee State University), The Big Top at Sea: The Circus and Animal Trade Market on Oceanic Voyages
11:00-11:30 Coffee and tea
11:30-13:00
Panel 1: Stowaways and Animal Hazards
- Margery Fee (University of British Columbia), Animals Control the Hunt: Polar Bears in Indigenous Stories
- Anna Boswell (University of Auckland), Stowaway Memory
- Derek Lee Nelson (University of New Hampshire), Shipworms and Atlantic history
Panel 2: Medieval /Early Modern Animals
- Lucy Mercer (Royal Holloway), Resurrected Memories of Mediterranean Marine Life in Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Liber (1531)
- Ana Trias Verbeeck (GabMusAna/ Museu Balear de Ciències), Circulating Marine Specimens from Barcelona to Abroad: The Salvador and the Maritime Popular Culture in Catalan and Balearic Coasts around 1700
- Melanie V Taylor, Hidden in Plain Sight: Visual evidence of the medieval trade in exotic birds and animals
13:00-13:45 Lunch
Poster presentation: Sandi Howie, Aubrey’s Ark and Maturin’s Menagerie (University of Aberdeen)
13:45-15:15
Panel 1: Whales
- Alexandra Paddock (University of Oxford), Swallowed by a Whale! – a Medieval Whale and a Victorian ‘Jonah’
- Felix Lüttge (University of Basel), Michelet’s Whale: A Political Zoology
- Jakobina Arch (Whitman College), Manly Whalers and Compassionate Whale-Mothers: Interpreting Human-Whale Relationships in Early Modern Japan
- Sophia Nicolov (University of Leeds), Whose Whale? Sperm Whale Strandings on Britain’s North Sea Coast
Panel 2: Seals, Conservation and Sanctuary
- Victoria Dickenson (McGill University), More than white coats – the seal as culture and commodity
- Helen Cowie (University of York), ‘The Seal and his Jacket’: Science, Politics and Conservation in the Fur Seal Fisheries of Alaska, 1850-1914
- Timothy Cooper (University of Exeter), Finding Sanctuary: The Meaning of Maritime Animal Rescue
15:15-15:45 Coffee and tea
15:45-17: 45. Representing Maritime Animals
- Pandora Syperek (Independent Scholar) and Sarah Wade (Science Museum), Curating the Sea
- Fernando do Campo (UNSW Sydney), To companion a Native Companion: The transportation of non-human animals for colonial affect during the 19th century
- Stephen Vrla (Michigan State University), Linda Kalof (Michigan State University), Cameron Whitley (Rutgers University-Camden), From Commodities to Agents: Exploring the Roles of Animals in Maritime History through National Geographic Imagery
- Jessica Sarah Rinland, Those surrounding the cetacean
18:00-19:00 Keynote speech (public lecture): Thom van Dooren, Voyaging with Snails: Stories from Hawai’i
Conference Dinner – venue & £ to be advised
Day 3 (April 27)
9:00-9:30 Welcome coffee/tea
9: 30-11:00
Panel 1: Animals and the Cold War
- Rachael Squire (Royal Holloway), From porpoises to plankton: The role animals in shaping the US Navy’s sub-marine living projects during the Cold War
- David J. McCaskey (UC Riverside), Holy Mackerel!: Chub Mackerel, the Naga Expedition, and American Cold War Power in Southeast Asian Waters
Panel 2: Maritime Animal Literature
- Silja Vuorikuru (University of Helsinki), Dogs on the Titanic: Aino Kallas’ Short Story ‘Luomakunnan huuto’ (1914)
- Ming Panha (University of Sheffield), ‘A tangled skein’: Capitalist violence and nonhuman resistance in ‘The Lion’s Mane’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- John Radcliffe (Kipling society), Rudyard Kipling and the mysteries of the high seas
11:00-12:00 Keynote speech : William Clarence-Smith, From Sail to Steam: the Maritime Transport of Equids and other animals
12:00-12:45 Lunch
12:45-14:15
Panel 1: Horses at Sea
- Barbora Hunčovská (Charles University), Horse and Soldier on the Ship. Human-Animal Experiences of First World War Maritime Horse Transports
- Jane Flynn (University of Derby), ‘A Weapon in the Hands of the Allies’:Transporting British Army Horses and Mules during The Great War
- Philip A. Homan (Idaho State University), ‘Far from Good Sailors’: American Horses and Mules for the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, 1899-1902 – An Equine Middle Passage of the Transatlantic Horse Trade
- Charlotte Carrington-Farmer (Roger Williams University), Shipping Horses: New England and the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Panel 2: Cattle Ships
- J. Keri Cronin (Brock University), Cruelty at Sea: The Visual Politics of the Live Export Industry in the Early 20th Century
- Stefano Pantaleone (University of British Columbia), Humanizing Maritime Animals: Cattle Ships at the End of the 19th Century
- Nancy Cushing (University of Newcastle, Australia), Sheep from Cowes: Using a shipboard journal to reconstruct human animal relations
14:15-14:45 Tea/coffee
14:45-16:30
Closing Session: Maritime Animal Poetics
- Jimmy Packham (Birmingham) and Laurence Publicover (Bristol), Dredging up the Deep: The Decontextualized Sea-creature in Nineteenth-century Writing
- Jolene Mathieson (University of Hamburg), From Sea Animal to Sea Monster (and Back Again?)
- Dominic O’Key (University of Leeds), ‘A species always threatened by disaster’: W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and the Natural History of the Herring.
Melanie V Taylor 
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