At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period in Bloomington, MN

What is, what was the human? This book argues that the making of the human as it is now understood implies a renegotiation of the relationship between the self and the world. The development of Renaissance technologies of difference such as mapping, colonialism and anatomy paradoxically also illuminated the similarities between human and non-human. This collection considers the borders between humans and their imagined others: animals, women, native subjects, machines. It examines border creatures (hermaphrodites, wildmen, and cyborgs) and border practices (science, surveying, and pornography).
Author Biography: Erica Fudge is Lecturer in English Literary Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies at Middlesex University, and the author of
Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture
.
Author Biography: Ruth Gilbert is Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton, and the author of
Early Modern Hermaphrodites: Sex and Other Stories
Author Biography: Susan Wiseman is Lecturer in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.