Projektbeschreibung:

Between 1650 and 1820 hair became a matter of racial distinction. People were categorized and separated not only by the colour of their skin or the measurements of their skulls, but also by the colour, texture and abundance of their head and body hair. MODI.HAIR analyses the early modern racialization of hair by connecting it, on the one hand, to the emerging large-scale trade in human and animal hair in the early modern “age of the wig” and, on the other hand, to a multispecies history of hair.

In short, we argue that the emergence of the dehumanizing category of the “less-than-human” needs to be analysed as an intertwined history of racial and speciesist thought linked to practices of trade. Being at the same time an important social and economic resource as well as a racial and speciesist marker, early modern human and animal hair is the perfect site to research this process. The project’s acronym “MODI” is short for “matter of distinction”. Simultaneously it also stands for four modi of hair practices and discourses that form our four main lines of inquiry: geographies, classifications, textures, paradoxes and denials. Starting in Central Europe, we move out of the continent along with the wig fashion, the trade in human and animal hair, and its racialization to develop a broad perspective on early modern hair, particularly in the Atlantic World where hair and wigs came to be especially important.

The core team (PI, postdoc, doctoral student, student assistants) will produce 3 book-length studies (working titles: “Multispecies Hair Trade and Hair Use in Central Europe”, “Hair Geographies and the Early Modern Long-Distance Trade in Hair”, “Dehumanized. Hair and Early Racial/Speciesist Theories”), publish 6 journal articles and 2 special issues, and host several international events. Additionally, we provide an online platform for public and interdisciplinary discussion of the hairy heritage still held in museums and collections.

MODI.HAIR will help to connect Switzerland to the current international research on the history of racialization before the 19th century (“race before race”) and to further expand and consolidate the Swiss expertise concerning more-than-human historical studies. The project will provide a node for exploring the potentials of the newly emerging multispecies approaches for the discipline of history, and will contribute to the evolving debates regarding a necessary more-than-human reorganization of the “Humanities” in the crises of the present.

Projektdauer: 1.9.2025-31.8.2030