Sarah-Maria Schober
Currently, I am working on my postdoc project "The Civet Cat. Producing Exotica in Early Modern Europe and Beyond". I am following the civet cat - producer of a highly valued animal perfume - , its scent, discourse and visual representation, on its geographically, economically and culturally wide reaching travels and transformations from the 15th to the 19th century.
Other research interests include early modern societies in Western Africa and the Caribbean, early modern uses of disgust, skulls and gendered bodies as well as early anthropology and ideas of race.
My dissertation (published with Campus in 2019) "Gesellschaft im Exzess. Mediziner in Basel um 1600" deals with the social value of excess:
To understand the Basel physicians' practices of bonding, interaction and authorization, different "social sites" are analyzed. This involves the households of single physicians and patients, the baths in the region, anatomical events but also the protagonists’ letters and prints with their paratexts, dedications and handwritten marginal notes. I am arguing that it is through different kinds of excess that the actions of my protagonists were socially productive.
Other research interests include early modern societies in Western Africa and the Caribbean, early modern uses of disgust, skulls and gendered bodies as well as early anthropology and ideas of race.
My dissertation (published with Campus in 2019) "Gesellschaft im Exzess. Mediziner in Basel um 1600" deals with the social value of excess:
To understand the Basel physicians' practices of bonding, interaction and authorization, different "social sites" are analyzed. This involves the households of single physicians and patients, the baths in the region, anatomical events but also the protagonists’ letters and prints with their paratexts, dedications and handwritten marginal notes. I am arguing that it is through different kinds of excess that the actions of my protagonists were socially productive.
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Books by Sarah-Maria Schober
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Articles by Sarah-Maria Schober
This article will argue that Blumenbach’s supposedly more “scientific” way of dealing with people with extraordinarily fair skin and hair did indeed foster his system of racial thought. By splitting up his observations on anatomical things like hair and skulls into the two realms of anthropology and anatomy, Blumenbach succeeded in bypassing the “problem” of the “white Negro” by separating it as an illness apart from his attempt to categorize humans anthropologically. The story of Blumenbach’s albino hair samples therefore fits perfectly into the context of the formation of the life sciences in the eighteenth century. It provides proof not only of a disciplinary differentiation between anatomists and anthropologists but also of the ongoing racial entanglement of the sciences.
In order to produce civet, civet cats where brought from Africa and Asia to be kept, fed and harvested unregarding their heavy, faecal smell at various Europeans courts, in perfume shops as well as by professional civet cat farmers in the cities. The essay shows that the history of civet and its purported later decline should not be explained by applying the deodorization model, as the latter is based on civilizational presumptions and proofs inconsistent with the sources.
Instead, the article proposes a different reading that focuses on the changing “timescapes” of civet, a concept that addresses the temporal and spatial meanings evoked by the smell. The analysis of the changes of the “timescapes” from future to present and, finally, past provides a new narrative of the history of animal scents and economic fashions from the late 15th to the early 19th century. It is based on time and pluritemporality as new conceptual tools to study the history of material objects. Thus, the contribution entangles current debates within the history of time and temporalities with material culture studies and the example of a hitherto economically very important yet today completely forgotten scent and its producing animal: the civet cat.
Talks by Sarah-Maria Schober
This article will argue that Blumenbach’s supposedly more “scientific” way of dealing with people with extraordinarily fair skin and hair did indeed foster his system of racial thought. By splitting up his observations on anatomical things like hair and skulls into the two realms of anthropology and anatomy, Blumenbach succeeded in bypassing the “problem” of the “white Negro” by separating it as an illness apart from his attempt to categorize humans anthropologically. The story of Blumenbach’s albino hair samples therefore fits perfectly into the context of the formation of the life sciences in the eighteenth century. It provides proof not only of a disciplinary differentiation between anatomists and anthropologists but also of the ongoing racial entanglement of the sciences.
In order to produce civet, civet cats where brought from Africa and Asia to be kept, fed and harvested unregarding their heavy, faecal smell at various Europeans courts, in perfume shops as well as by professional civet cat farmers in the cities. The essay shows that the history of civet and its purported later decline should not be explained by applying the deodorization model, as the latter is based on civilizational presumptions and proofs inconsistent with the sources.
Instead, the article proposes a different reading that focuses on the changing “timescapes” of civet, a concept that addresses the temporal and spatial meanings evoked by the smell. The analysis of the changes of the “timescapes” from future to present and, finally, past provides a new narrative of the history of animal scents and economic fashions from the late 15th to the early 19th century. It is based on time and pluritemporality as new conceptual tools to study the history of material objects. Thus, the contribution entangles current debates within the history of time and temporalities with material culture studies and the example of a hitherto economically very important yet today completely forgotten scent and its producing animal: the civet cat.
How are we to write „world history" or „global history"? Which implications and impacts on European historians and historians of Europe have those new theoretical and methodological challenges?
We are looking forward to discussing these and other questions with you in June 2016 in Basel.
Please keep looking for news on the conference website.
Les contributions pourront ainsi historiciser ces espaces de négociation, conceptualiser les zones de tension entre la production animale industrielle et les rapports de proximité affective et analyser quels sont les catégories, ressources ou services qui sont à chaque fois déterminants. Au-delà de ces perspectives, l’intérêt portera aussi sur la discussion concernant l’animate history (Krüger/Steinbrecher/Winkelmann 2014) à partir de cas empiriques : peut-on prendre en compte une agency des animaux de rente dans leurs liens avec les êtres humains, les structures et les appareils ? Un autre point d’accroche critique pourrait être donné par une confrontation avec les animal sciences. Les contributions – en français, allemand ou italien – pourront traiter de l’histoire des animaux de rente d’un point de vue social, économique, rural, culturel, environnemental, technique, scientifique ou médical, mais aussi dans une perspective de genre ou de vie quotidienne. Elles peuvent porter sur toutes les périodes historiques et aller au-delà de l’espace suisse ou européen.