About the conference

Women, Men, and Other Animals

Aristotle called the human being a zoon politikon by nature. But who exactly was this political animal? In other words, where are the boundaries of humanity to be drawn? Thinkers through the ages reflected on whether women and children were included in the question of the political; whether foreigners, slaves or servants could be considered fully human; and — particularly prompted by Roman Law — whether animals and human beings could be said to share legal and moral spaces. Indeed, concepts of what constituted true humanness are constantly being negotiated; they remain historically contingent.

This annual meeting of the Intellectual History Society invites papers that historicize shifting categories of men, women and other animals throughout the ages. When, where, how and why were boundaries drawn and redrawn between men and women, animals and non-animals, between proper and improper subjects of agency, law, and morality?

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