Dr André Krebber

Susan Manning Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr André Krebber

Susan Manning Postdoctoral Fellow November 2017 - August 2018

Home Institution - University of Kassel, Germany

Project: Recovering the Particular: Animals between Science and Art in the Enlightenment

andrekrebber@hotmail.com

I am an environmental studies scholar with interests in social theory, epistemology, aesthetics, intellectual history and animals. My research is motivated by understanding the ways in which the environmental crisis has been culturally perceived and negotiated, as well as by offering approaches to current environmental challenges through critical philosophical inquiry. I received my PhD in cultural studies from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2015 and have since been a lecturer in cultural and social history and human-animal studies at the University of Kassel in Germany. My current projects include developing an exhibition on the aesthetics of the octopus with artist Yvette Watt (University of Tasmania, AUS) and an edited volume on animal biography for Palgrave’s Studies in Animals and Literature. 

While at IASH I am finalizing a book that explores the animal as a figure of aesthetic ecocriticism through a comparative analysis of the place of animals in the works of René Descartes (1596-1650), Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) and Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). Approaching her research objects as a trained artist as well as a self-taught naturalist, Merian’s rich and vivid yet analytical studies of insect metamorphosis provide furthermore an example for a scientific-aesthetic research programme that I am aiming to develop from my research.