Public Lecture: The Animal Imaginary in European Art

Katie Hornstein is a professor of art history at Dartmouth College and the author of Picturing War in France (Yale, 2018) and, more recently, Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century (Yale, 2024). A collection she co-edited with Daniel Harkett, Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories, is forthcoming from Leuven University Press in 2025.

A specialist in the long nineteenth century, Katie’s current work engages with contemporary debates in art history and the humanities more broadly, including post-humanism, the intertwined logics of empire and ecological destruction, and the representation and uses of non-human animal bodies in modern material and visual culture. She is currently developing a new project dedicated to carrier pigeons and their expansive labors in service to humans.

Katie received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.