Yale Environmental Humanities was launched in 2018 as a platform to highlight and support the emerging interdisciplinary conversation, across departments and schools, about environmental problems and human connections to the natural world.
Today, environmental themes are deeply intertwined with the humanities across a broad range of courses at Yale - including the one featured here. Read an overview and explore other course features.
A dozen students huddled over an illustrated book about animals that was published in France sometime in the 1830s. Their instructor, Ivana Dizdar, a historian of visual and material culture, urged them to look closely at the deep red and blue feathers of the bird shown on the open page, noting that this image, like all in the book, had been hand-painted.
This volume was among a varied collection of French visual materials propped on pillows on a table in the Beinecke Library and assembled in collaboration with curator Shannon K. Supple for this class session.
As the students carefully turned the book's delicate pages, several commented that the depictions of some animals looked a little strange or, conversely, too perfect. This, Dizdar explained, is because artists of this period were often presenting an "idealized version" of animals.
"This is a turtle," Dizadar said as the students examined a drawing of a turtle, "but also the idea of a turtle."
