Hunting Troubles

This volume examines the cultural history of European and North American hunting from the Middle Ages to the present day from the perspective of gender as well as animal studies. It demonstrates that the hunting and killing of animals was (and still is) a highly codified activity that creates, reinforces, and sometimes undermines a variety of differences. This construction and deconstruction of difference applies not only to the relationship between “humanity” and “animality” but also to the relationships between human agents with respect to their gender. By applying a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach, this collection dissects the many ways in which hunting—often classified as a “typically male”’ activity—participates, on the one hand, in the naturalization of gender differences and related binary asymmetries but, on the other, can sometimes open up a space in which gender boundaries become unsettled and blurred. More than any other activity, the practice of hunting—which is controversial at least in terms of animal ethics—seems to lend itself to the negotiation of both what is perceived as human and what as animal and what is seen as masculine and what as feminine.

Laura Beck is a postdoctoral researcher in German and Comparative Literature at the University of Hannover, Germany. She has published widely on postcolonialism and German literature, comparative literature, intermediality, and travel writing. She has also published several articles on the representation of hunting in contemporary literature and film and is currently working on a book on hunters as liminal figures in literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present.

Maurice Saß is Professor of Art History at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Germany. He has published several books and articles on the history of the hunt, early modern gender politics, and animals in early modern art. He is currently preparing a new book on the historical intersections of art and hunting.