Description:
From quaggas to thylacine to dinosaurs, Animals, Plants and Afterimages brings together leading scholars in the humanities and life sciences to explore how extinct species are represented in media, art, literature and elsewhere, crossing academic boundaries to explore how portrayals of disappeared species embody cultural assumptions.
Brief description:
Valérie Bienvenue is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History of Art and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal. Her thesis critically examines human-equine relations through the prism of modern art and visual culture. Prior to her academic career, she worked for ten years in equestrian circles, including teaching bareback riding and rehabilitating horses suffering from physical and psychological trauma. She is the author of several articles and book chapters.
Review Quotes:
"Animals, Plants and Afterimages draws together an impressive range of essays that describe, contemplate, explore, and challenge the relationships between extinction and representation, engaging with a series of perceptual, conceptual, material, and illusory afterimages of animals and plants with whom we can no longer co-exist but who still matter to us." - Rick De Vos, Curtin University
"The editors' approach to extinctions through museum exhibitions, technologies and works of art is highly illuminating. Next time, when I visit a natural history museum, I will see the exhibition and the dead animals and plants in a different light." - Markku Oksanen, University of Eastern Finland