In autumn 2019, Chris Bongrartz, professor of linguistics at the University of Cologne, and Christoph Lange, social anthropologist and at that time lecturer and research associate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, met for the first time to discuss ideas and possibilities for a collaborative research project on horses.
Chris, who is also a passionate horse person, had at that time started to think specifically about the importance of horses – i.e. horse-specific language and knowledge about horses – for her linguistic research and situational analysis of multilingual encounters in Moroccan tourism. Christoph was at that time completing his dissertation and research on the Arabian horse breeding industry, having already completed several years of field research with breeders and horse enthusiasts in Egypt, the Arab Gulf States, the US and Europe, and had thus established a certain reputation as the “horse anthropologist” at the University of Cologne.
Both quickly realized that they have a lot in common and that it is about time to seriously promote horse related research at the University of Cologne and that an alliance between a linguist and an anthropologist would be a fantastic starting point to inquire what they shortly afterwards coined horse or equine literacy: The knowledge, skills, and interspecies co-presence that shape horse–human communication, especially across linguistic and cultural boundaries. After their first meetings, they began to create a network of like-minded horse researchers from a wide range of disciplines and planned a workshop that should involve horses and horse practitioners focusing on the role of horses in shaping human imagination, political ecologies, and interspecies relations. The main goal was to bridge equine practices and cultural theory by exploring how stories, symbols, and embodied interactions around horses reflect and reproduce broader global inequalities—in particular along South–North trajectories. But then, like every else too, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and postponed the plans because they were convinced that the topic can only be approached co-presence of horses and humans.
Then, two years later in 2021, on a recommendation of anthropologist John Hartigan, Kaori Nagai from the University of Kent contacted Christoph and asked if he would be interested in joining the AHCR project on Rethinking Fables – coincidently it was exactly the moment when Chris and Christoph also thought of reviving the plans for the “Material Horse”, so the timing was perfect. It began an exciting exchange between the University of Cologne and the University of Kent and the Horse Fables became a part of the Rethinking Fables project. Explore below the rich array of horse fables has emerged from our collaboration (Christoph Lange, MESH, University of Cologne)
