In this episode we switch gears toward considering historical methods. Sean Kheraj and Jennifer Bonnell come onto the show to discuss their edited book Traces of The Animal Past and together with Claudia they delve into some of the ways environmental and animal histories differ as well as some of the key methods scholars interested in them can use.
Topics Covered:
animal history versus environmental history
searching for animals in the archive
borrowing tools from natural and social sciences to widen primary sources
writing as a method
domesticated versus wild animal histories
Indigenous perspectives that reframe animals as relations and obligations
Animal Highlight: Goats in Kingston, Ontario
Date Recorded: 20 March 2026
Jennifer Bonnell is the author or co-editor of four books, including Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley, released in second edition by the University of Toronto Press in 2024, and Stewards of Splendour: A History of Wildlife and People in British Columbia, published by the Royal BC Museum in 2023. Her current book project explores efforts by nineteenth and early twentieth-century beekeepers to protect pollinator habitats in the Great Lakes Region. Jennifer teaches Canadian and environmental history at York University.
Sean Kheraj is a professor of Canadian and environmental history at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research examines a range of topics in environmental history including the role of non-human animals in nineteenth-century urban environments and the development of long distance oil pipelines in twentieth-century Canada.
“But what can a text like this tell us about this cat? How did it feel about playing such a role in the emergence of the alliance between the French and the Wendat in the early years of the French empire in North America? What was its experience of the environments of New France? How did it adapt to the new setting? Where did it sleep?” – Sean Kheraj and Jennifer Bonnell, Traces of The Animal Past
“All honest convictions deserve respect, except the presumptuous assertion that there is nothing higher in the world than the mind of man.” – Karl von Frisch
“He knows his bees do not speak as humans. He knows their language is less but also more than his own, and he knows his new discipline allows space only for the less. Where within the rationality of his science can he find a language to communicate a difference for which no words exist? Where can he find a language in which to understand the absence of language as something other than a lack?” – Hugh Raffles
Credits:
Sponsor: Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E)
Guests: Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraj
Host: Claudia Hirtenfelder
Editing and Production: Claudia Hirtenfelder
Episode Artwork: Rebecca Shen
Content Creation and Support: Herre de Bondt and Carlo Salzani
Animal Highlight: Stones Walking Tour
Sound Effects: Epidemic Sound, You Tube
Bed Music: Gordon Clarke
Logo: Jeremy John
A.P.P.L.E Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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