Beyond Moby Dick and Save the Whales: Emerging Currents in Whale History

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Amidst oceanic and multispecies turns within environmental history, whales have emerged as key figures. As iconic wildlife, whales often take on a unique role in representing not only themselves, but also entire ecosystems, histories, and ideologies. Whales, quite frankly, are having a moment – and that moment has a history.

While cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are not new subject matter for more traditional maritime history, history of science, or animal history, this roundtable turns toward emerging approaches to whale history that are innovative, experimental, and nontraditional. More-than-human and multispecies approaches emphasize whales as actors in human-whale historical encounters, rather than painting them as passive subjects. Labor histories and energy histories demonstrate relationships between whale history and histories of extractivism, climate change, and capitalism. Instead of centering only Western histories of colonial commercial whaling, this roundtable listens to insights from political ecology, Indigenous studies and knowledges, Black ecologies, and anticolonial theory that call for reorienting whale histories beyond Western-centric approaches. Moreover, telling stories about whale histories does not take place only in the academy, and this roundtable seeks to push past divides between disciplines and sectors in narrating and imagining whale histories.

In this roundtable, speakers from within and beyond environmental history will explore the tensions, challenges, and promises of whale histories. With geographic expertise from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and professional experiences from traditional academic historical publishing and teaching to arts practice, curation, and storytelling for public audiences, the roundtable members bring crucial insights into cetacean pasts, presents, and futures. Our roundtable aims to spark conversations with the audience about these emerging currents in whale history.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Moderator

• Anna Guasco, University of Cambridge

Presenters

• Bathsheba Demuth, Brown University

• Ayasha Guerin, University of California, Los Angeles

• Ryan Tucker Jones, University of Oregon