The Annual Medieval and Early Modern Slavonic Workshop Series presents ‘Early Modern Extinction’, led by Dr. Tomasz Grusiecki, Associate Professor of Early Modern European Art and Material Culture at Boise State University.
Friday, 31 January 2025
10.00-14.00
The Old Library,
Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge
The event is free but requires registration as spaces are limited. All interested upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate students and scholars in medieval and early modern history and culture are welcome to register for this event. To register please send your name and academic or professional position with a statement of interest of no more than 300 words to
Dr Olenka Pevny, University of Cambridge, at ozp20@cam.ac.uk by Tuesday, 28 January 2024.
Coffee, and lunch will be provided.
The workshop will examine how early modern art shaped elite ecological awareness through objects and images that brought endangered or recently extinct animal species back into focus. Were these representations haunting reminders of a vanished ecosystem—powerful symbols of anxiety and loss—or did they, conversely, normalize ecocide by trivializing the animals' physical disappearance while multiplying their presence in the realm of representation? Tomasz Grusiecki is Associate Professor of Early Modern European Art and Material Cultures at Boise State University. His research encompasses early modern cultural entanglements, European perceptions of the wider world, eco-critical examinations of artistic materials, and zoopolitics of art-making, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe from 1500 to 1700. He is the author of Transcultural Things and the Spectre of Orientalism in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania (Manchester University Press, 2023). In Spring 2025, he is a Residential Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Workshop Readings It is strongly recommended that participants look over the suggested reading materials before the workshop.
• “Of the Unicorn” and “Of the Ure-Ox” in Edward Topsell, The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (London: 1658), 551–562. https://archive.org/details/historyoffourfoo00tops/page/550/mode/2up
• Jurkowlaniec, Grażyna. “The Bison Trail through the Hercynian Forest: Names, Images, and Identities in Ptolemy’s Tabula Europae IV and Münster’s Cosmographia,” Viator 53, no. 1 (2022): 307–345.
• Ray, Sugata. “’Dead as a Dodo’: Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World.” TDR: The Drama Review 67, no. 1 (2023): 126–135.
• Lippit, Akira Mizuta, “The Death of an Animal,” Film Quarterly 56, no. 1 (2002): 9–22.
Workshop schedule
10.00-10.30 Guests arrive; Refreshments
10:30-11.00 Presentation - The Extinction of the Aurochs and the Last Object Ever Made from the horns of this bovine
12.00-13.00 Seminar Discussion
13.00-14.00 Discussion over Lunch
Abstract of presentation: From the 16th century onward, Jaktorów Forest became the last sanctuary for the aurochs, a now-extinct species of long-horned wild cattle. Royal archival records underscore the Polish kings’ efforts to protect this iconic species, mandating forest leaseholders to feed the animals, guard them against poachers, compensate farmers for crop damage, and prevent habitat fragmentation. Despite these measures, the last aurochs perished in 1627. This lecture examines objects made from the horns of aurochs, which aimed to re/animate these endangered—and eventually extinct—species. Special attention is given to a hunting horn, now at Stockholm's Livrustkammaren, made from the horn of the last aurochs. It serves as both an artistic eulogy for an extinct species and an emblem of loss for the Polish realm. Aurochs conservation became a form of bio-diplomacy (offering aurochs artifacts as gifts) and soft power (attracting attention from early modern influencers across Europe). Jaktorów Forest became a branding opportunity for the Polish court, akin to a modern "extinction industry," making the forest indispensable to those desiring horns of the aurochs in their collections. How can the failed governance of Jaktorów Forest inform an ecocritical perspective on early modern art history, revealing the intersections of ecological crisis, art making, and political expediency?
Please visit https://www.nvs.admin.cam.ac.uk/getting-cambridge for directions to Cambridge and https://map.cam.ac.uk/Pitt+Building#52.202095,0.117734,15 for a map of the city centre.