This weekend I am in Guelph, Ontario for the 2012 Canadian History and Environment Summer School, an annual gathering of environmental history faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students affiliated with NiCHE. This is one of the most interesting environmental history events and I look forward to attending each year.
The theme for this year’s summer school is “farmed animals in environmental history.” The organizers have chosen to interpret the term “farmed” very broadly encompassing a wide variety of ways in which humans have cultivated different nonhuman animal species. As such, the plenary sessions will examine bees, chickens, aquaculture, urban animals, and oysters. Readers can access the full schedule with abstracts here.
My contribution to the summer school this year will be on the urban animals plenary. I will be delivering a preview of my upcoming conference paper for the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association titled, “Animals and the Urban Food Supply: The Central Public Market in Winnipeg, 1874-1890.” This paper examines the establishment of Winnipeg’s first public market in the late decades of the nineteenth century along with the creation of the regulatory framework for public markets in the city. As the central site for the sale and distribution of live and dead animals, this paper fits with my broader research project on the role of nonhuman animals in Canadian urban environmental history. I will post audio from this talk next week along with my presentation images. Stay tuned!
