• All history, whether written or taught, carries with it certain perspectives. Human-horse interactions expands on more traditional perspectives on the past. Here’s a brief recap of how historical research and writing has developed as a field. I hope this  gives you a context for understanding the evolution of history as a discipline and our approach to the past and how it differs from earlier perspectives.
  • People have been fascinated with the past for a very long time. Cave paintings give us pictographic representations of prehistoric times. Historians generally credit the Greek Herodotus (c 484 BCE-430 BCE) as the “Father of History” because of his History of the Persian Wars, the first written narrative history using primary source documents and other first-hand accounts. He visited historic sites, like a modern scholar would do, but he also conflated myth and fact and injected the will of the Greek gods into his narrative. His countryman Thucidydes (c 460 BCE-404 BCE) wrote a reasonably accurate and objective History of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. However, he created fictional dialogue to spice his history, thus blending history and fiction.
  • Fast forward 2500 years! Within the recent past, some scholars began moving animals from the background to the forefront of historical analysis. Barry H. Lopez pioneered this perspective in 1978 with his book Of Wolves and Men. Other historians, including Prof. Slatta, have taken up interactions between humans and domesticated animals, such as dogs, donkeys, oxen, and horses. Some of this research is applied, such as studies of animal-assisted therapy for both physical and mental handicaps and veterinary research on improved medical treatment and training for horses. Your readings reflect this broad, interdisciplinary approach to history, drawing upon writing by veterinarians, trainers, therapists, and many others outside the traditional realm of history. You can find a good sampling of this literature on human-animals interactions.
  • Animals rights advocates and philosophers investigate research and treatment issues affecting animals and ethical questions of animals as food. See the online bibliography on human-animals interactions . You might also wish to join in conversation with an online listserv [discussion] on human-animals interactions.
  • Like historical research, the teaching of history has evolved over time. As with historical writing, effective teaching began with a Greek, Socrates (470-399 BC). He developed the Socratic Method of question-driven dialogue still used effectively today However, historians now used many additional teaching methods. Our course pedagogy, inquiry-guided learning, which builds on Socrates. See details in the HI 222 course syllabus.
  • As in a traditional history course, we pay attention to political changes and the sociocultural context of England since 1688, using A Short History of England, the textbook by Simon Jenkins, as our guide. However, we go well beyond the traditional areas of politics, diplomacy and warfare. Just as the historian’s research agenda has greatly expanded, so has our pedagogical vision and practice. We use the human-horse relationship as a lens to probe issues more broadly and creatively. Thus war horses get as much attention as the generals who rode them in WWI and other conflicts. We will explore the change from animal to steam and later gasoline power and note the economic, social, and cultural ramifications of this process. We will work at the individual level (an important historical perspective), drawing on your own equestrian experiences (if any) and those of people we interview. But we will also work at the big history level over millennia to put such individual experiences into a wider social and cultural context. In sum, students do both micro and macro history.
  • This course and its approach began as Prof. Slatta prepared for a panel at the American Historical Association meeting in New Orleans (January 2013). He and other historians compared human-horse interactions in many areas of the world. Ann Norton Greene and Finnish scholar Pekka Hamalainen also served on the panel. Slatta is collaborating with panelist Prof. Sandra Swart of Stellenbosch University on a project comparing human-horse interactions in the Americas and South Africa. Prof. Swart will be in London in July, so she will speak with Slatta’s students about her work. Ted Chamberlain, author of Horse, gives voice to horses in his creative study and has made helpful suggestions about our course.
  • Our approach, a brand new perspective among professional historians, is excitingly experimental, but others are taking similar paths. Eastern Kentucky University held a conference on “Living with Animals” from March 21-23, 2013, which included a panel on “Living with Horses. ” The Horses & Humans Research Council probes similar issues. Ours may well be the first course outside of vet schools using a human-horse lens to illuminate other historical questions. [Do an Internet search-you won’t find much out there.] I’ve appended a list of other recent studies that privilege the important and varied roles horse have played in human history. You’ll be making history, so I hope you embrace and enjoy the challenge.