AnimalFarm Seminar Series - Fall 2026 | 1 – Giovanni Ferrarese
AnimalFarm explores the architectural history of animal farming in Europe and North America, from sixteenth-century Palladian villas until late-twentieth-century automated factory farms.
The project engages with the perspectives of critical animal studies, history of veterinary medicine, and labor history. AnimalFarm ultimately explores the historical roots of a controversial phenomenon of the Anthropocene, and it fosters an alternative aze on the spatial, material, and ethical implications of the human-animal relationship through time.
The AnimalFarm seminar series brings together scholars from different disciplines whose research intersects with architectural and animal history, as well as ethnography, critical animal studies, history of science and design theory.
All talks will be in English, unless specified.
1 – Giovanni Ferrarese, Dalla stalla razionale alla fattoria senza terra. Le trasformazioni della zootecnia intensiva italiana nel secondo dopoguerra (the talk will be in Italian)
Beginning in the immediate postwar period, new industrial farming methods began to gain increasing prominence, even in those areas of Italy with a particularly strong tradition of livestock production. This seminar aims to reconstruct the main economic, political, and social developments that accompanied the transition from traditional livestock farming systems to modern forms of intensive farming, examining the resulting changes in production structures, management practices, and the organization of labour. The objective is to highlight how the transformation of livestock farming involved not only techniques and production models, but also brought about deeper changes in the relationships between labour, business, territory, and the environment in postwar Italy.
About the speaker
Giovanni Ferrarese is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (ISMed) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), an Adjunct Lecturer in Contemporary History and Economic History at the University of Salerno, and a member of the Italian Society for Labour History (SISLAV).
His research focuses on the history of labour, with particular attention to the agricultural world and the social, economic, and productive transformations that have shaped it. His work also explores the intersections between labour history and environmental history, investigating the relationships between productive activities, workers, territories, and environmental change.
PROGRAM
Monday 05.10, 9.30–11.30 – Giovanni Ferrarese, Dalla stalla razionale alla fattoria senza terra. Le trasformazioni della zootecnia intensiva italiana nel secondo dopoguerra
Thursday 22.10, 10.00–12.00 – Camille Bellet, Milking rhythms: Sensing practices and multispecies relations in automated dairy farming
Wednesday 28.10, 16.00–18.00 – Andrea Borghini, “Animal Farm”: Philosophical Perspectives
INFO
To attend online, please send an email to: animal.farm@polito.it
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