Animal Americas

Nonhuman creatures—mammals, fish, insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians—are everywhere in the art of
the Americas. They appear as subjects of representation; their bodies are routinely used in art supplies;
and their lives and bodies are subject to endless human manipulation. Nonhuman animals are also makers;
they create, destroy, reshape and repurpose material things, and they continually contribute to expanded
aesthetic ecologies of sound, taste, touch, and smell. And nonhuman creatures—variously experienced as
relatives, companions, captives, collaborators and aggressors—also look back. If John Berger asked,
“Why Look at Animals?” a reciprocal question might go like this: what do animals see when they look at
our human-made visual and material world?

“Animal Americas” invites papers that consider at least one of the above roles played by animals play in
the art history of the Americas. Because nonhuman beings move through geographies and chronologies
that don’t neatly correspond to the maps and timelines of humans—much less to categories of national
identity or academic specialization—this panel offers an opportunity to challenge the Americanist
subfield’s original boundaries. Further, given its investment in animal posthumanisms, ecocriticism,
materiality, and nonoccular aesthetics, this session invites methodologies that facilitate conversations
across the allied fields of Asian American, Black diaspora and African American, Latin American, Latinx
and Chicanx, Native American, and U.S. histories of art and visual/material culture. Possible topics range
widely, and may include: hives, dams, dioramas, zoos, cartoons, kids’ books, birdsong, butchering,
cochineal, conservation, scrimshaw, featherwork, albumen prints, musk perfumes, or parlor aquariums.