“The Ethical Choices of Whales: Bowheads, Hunters, and the Nature of History” Bathsheba Demuth (Brown University)

Bowhead whales were known to three distinct groups along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: the indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. In this talk, Bathsheba Demuth explores how we learned about whales by hunting them: How were whales, particularly bowheads, imagined and treated? What kinds of emotional relationships were possible between humans and whales, and were these relationships ethical? How did the whales themselves adapt to hunting pressures? Demuth explores these questions using oral histories, logbooks, diaries, and Soviet records. Demuth also reflects on how the consideration of whale behavior in our analysis of human–whale interactions allows is crucial to situating non-human actions in human narratives of the past.