HISTORIAN

France

Biography

Éric Baratay is a historian specialising in the contemporary world and in the status of animals. He teaches at Jean Moulin University in Lyon. He conducts research at the Rhône-Alpes Historical Research Laboratory, in the CNRS unit. He specializes in animal history and human-animal relations, a discipline, which is currently in full development in France. He has worked on phenomena related to violence (corrida) and to confinement (zoos), as well as on the evolution of representations and concepts (Christianity, zoology) and the history of the animal condition. His most recent published works include: Et l’homme créa l’animal (And Man created the Animal) (2003), which provides a historical fresco of the animal condition, Portraits d’animaux (Animal Portraits) (2007), which is devoted to the most beautiful zoology boards produced in the Nineteenth Century, and La Société des animaux de la Révolution à la Libération (The Society of Animals from the Revolution to Liberation) (2008), which demonstrates how animals were extensively placed in the service of men and how they disrupted the society of that time.