Baltic Human-Animal Histories: Book Subvention Report

The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) is pleased to recognize the successful conclusion of a Book Publication Subvention Grant awarded to Peter Lang Publishing Group for the volume Baltic Human-Animal Histories: Relations, Trade, and Representations, edited by Estonian scholars Linda Kaljundi, Anu Mänd, Ulrike Plath, and Kadri Tüür.

“This is a truly inspiring book that finds answers to research desiderata, reveals new perspectives, and opens new horizons,” said Michael Rücker, Senior Commissioning Editor at Peter Lang. “We appreciate the collaboration with the editors and AABS and look forward to the response from the AABS community and academia.”

Linda Kaljundi is a Professor of Cultural History at the Estonian Academy of Arts and a research fellow at Tallinn University. She has published on Baltic and Nordic premodern and modern history and historiography, collective memory, and nation-building.

Anu Mänd is a Professor of Art History at the University of Tartu and an Associate Professor at Tallinn University. She has specialized in medieval art, animal history and social history in the Baltic Sea region.

Ulrike Plath is a professor of environmental history at Tallinn University. She has researched Baltic food, animal, and climate history, and also Baltic German cultural and literature history.

Kadri Tüür is a researcher in the project Estonian Environmentalism in the 20th Century: Ideology, Discourses, Practices at Tallinn University. Her PhD thesis applied semiotic methodology in the analysis of written nature representations.

The Impact of an Award: Report from the Editors

After the publication of Baltic Human-Animal Histories, the editor submitted the following to AABS.
We thank them for their permission to publish their thoughts here.

Together with our contributing authors, our editor Michael Rücker and the production team at the Peter Lang Publishers, we are very grateful for the book publication subvention awarded by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies to support the publication of Baltic Human-Animal Histories: Relations, Trading, and Representations as part of the Studies in Literature, Culture, and the Environment series.

Animals have entered the Baltic history writing comparatively recently. This volume provides the first overview of human-animal history in the Baltic region. Examining historical entanglements between human and non-human animals from pre-Christian times to the present time and discussing a wide range of species, the book integrates transnational research of Baltic history and culture with interdisciplinary human-animal studies. Covering a period of almost one thousand years, the chapters of this 370-page book allow us to trace continuity and change in Baltic human-animal history over longer periods.

In the process of preparing the book, receiving the AABS Book Publication Subvention came at a very crucial time for us. It allowed us to proceed with the volume with full confidence that we would be able to cover the major costs associated with editing, typesetting, images, and printing the book. The receipt of the AABS Book Publication Subvention also helped to secure additional funding from other international foundations, most notably the Paul Kaegbein Foundation of the Baltische Historische Kommission. In view of the wide chronological and disciplinary range of the articles, high-quality professional editing was of paramount importance for the volume, and having full confidence that we could proceed with it was essential for the entire editing and publishing process. We are also very pleased that we were able to print more images, including color images, than are usually included in an academic book. Images were essential to several of the articles and to the book as a whole, for which the representation of animals is one of the key themes.

The book is closely related to recent developments and discussions in Baltic Studies in a number of ways. To a large extent, it builds on the competence of the Baltic humanities in interdisciplinary research. In recent decades, historians, art historians, literary scholars, and other humanities scholars have demonstrated the importance of analyzing Baltic history from multiple perspectives. They have focused on the entanglements of different ethnic, social, and other groups in Baltic history, as well as on the close and complex relationships between the cultural imaginaries and memories of these groups. As editors, we hope that, together with our authors, we have capitalized on and further developed the competence of Baltic history and the humanities in transnational and entangled research.

The aim of this volume is to place animals more firmly at the center of Baltic historiography. The chronological scope of the articles ranges from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century and includes studies of animals in relation to human activities, animals as objects of trade, and visual representations of animals. The authors of the book are leading Baltic historians (Stefan Donecker, Inna Jürjo, Juhan Kreem, Ivar Leimus, Ulrike Plath), art historians (Jaanika Anderson, Anu Mänd), archaeologists (Tõnno Jonuks, Lembi Lõugas, Eve Rannamäe), conservators (Hilkka Hiiop), semioticians (Kadri Tüür), geographers (Anita Zariņa, Dārta Treija, Ivo Vinogradovs), classics scholars (Kaarina Rein), and theologians (Meelis Friedenthal).

Looking back on this experience, we can say that in Baltic history animals come to the fore as soon as we start looking for them. Studying them and placing their various appearances and encounters in a larger context is a work that remains largely to be done. The present collection will hopefully lay the foundation for many further studies in Baltic animal history. We are deeply grateful to the AABS for supporting this initiative.

We would also like to thank all the contributors to the volume who have been with us throughout the publication process. In addition to the AABS Book Publication Subvention and the Paul Kaegbein Foundation of the Baltic Historical Commission, this volume was prepared and published with the support of research projects at the University of Tallinn and the Under and Tuglas Literature Center of the Estonian Academy of Sciences: PRG908 Estonian Environmentalism in the 20th century: ideology, discourses, practices; PRG1276 Digital Livonia: For a Digitally Enhanced Study of Medieval Livonia (ca. 1200–1550); TF1220, Developing KAJAK’s (TLU’s Centre for Environmental History) competences in Applied Environmental Humanities; TF1620 Digital Livonia: Visual Sources; IUT18-8, The Making of Livonia: Actors, Institutions and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region; IUT28-1, Entangled Literatures: Discursive History of Literary Culture in Estonia. Many thanks to our editor Michael Rücker and the production team at the Peter Lang Publishers.