„Zoophilologica” 2/2027 – Call for Papers

Animals in the Human World – Humans in the Animal World in Past Epochs: A Historical-Cultural Perspective (16th-19th c.) guest-edited by Prof. Agnieszka Laszczak-Słaby and Prof. Małgorzata Ewa Kowalczyk

The aim of the proposed issue is to examine human–animal relations as a dynamic historical and cultural process that has co-shaped forms of interspecies coexistence in past epochs – an area that remains relatively underexplored within animal studies.

The issue focuses on historical and cultural approaches to human–animal relations between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Particular attention will be given to their variability, multidimensionality, and embeddedness in social practices, cultural discourses, and systems of knowledge characteristic of earlier periods.

While the primary focus is on the European context, contributions adopting broader, comparative, or transregional perspectives are also welcome.

From the perspective of animal studies, human–animal relations are understood as complex and asymmetrical configurations of interspecies dependency, manifest both in the material practices of everyday life and in their cultural representations. We are especially interested in the ways animals functioned as active participants in social life, while also being discursively constructed entities – present in language, literature, art, and scientific thought.

We invite contributions that explore the presence of animals in everyday human experience, including economic, medical, communicative, travel-related, and ritual contexts.

Of particular interest are analyses that examine how humans entered the world of animals—by subordinating it, coexisting with it, or attempting to understand it—as well as how animals co-shaped social space in past epochs, including studies addressing questions of animal agency.

We also welcome contributions focusing on representations of animals in cultural texts – literature, visual arts, and other forms of expression – and on their symbolic, allegorical, and epistemological functions.

We invite interdisciplinary submissions situated within the humanities – especially history, cultural anthropology, and art history – that engage with interspecies relations from a historical perspective.

The proposed topic aligns with the expanding field of research on human–animal relations and aims to contribute a more sustained historical dimension to contemporary animal studies.

Publication calendar:

• November 30, 2026 – submission deadline
• January 31, 2027 – planned completion of the review process
• March 15, 2027 – submission deadline for revised articles
• Second half of 2027 – publication of accepted articles