Animal Studies

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The Animal Studies: An Introduction course is designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in all major topics of this emerging field of knowledge. It aims to prepare students to analyse and interpret selected texts and visual materials focused on human–(nonhuman)animal relations. The course should enable students to apply a variety of concepts and methods to individually chosen case studies. It offers the opportunity to undertake own research leading to a final essay, and to reflect on the influence that theoretical perspectives developed within Animal Studies can have on human attitudes towards (nonhuman)animals. It aims to provide not only subject-related knowledge skills but also research, study and personal skills.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to Human-Animal Studies: key concepts and methods Week 2: Anthropocentrism, speciesism and human-animal divide
Week 3: Anthropomorphism: strategy or/and error
Week 4: Domestication of animals and farming
Week 5: Eating animals
Week 6: Animal death in art
Week 7: Beekeeping
Week 8: Animals and biotechnologies
Week 9: Zoo: past and present
Week 10: Animal consciousness
Week 11: Aquatic environments
Week 12: Animals and religions and cults
Week 13: Wild animals
Week 14: Animal phobias
Week 15: Animals in society: final essays & discussion

Reading list

Adams, C. J. „Why Feminist-vegan Now?” Feminism & Psychology, 20(3), 2010.Armstrong, P. “The Postcolonial Animal.” http://www.psyeta.org/sa/sa10.4/armstrong.shtmlBaker, S. “’You Kill Things to Look at Them’: Animal Death in Contemporary Art.” In Killing animals, eds. Animal Studies Group, University of Illinois Press, 2006.Bekoff, M. “Aquatic Animals, Cognitive Ethology, and Ethics: Questions about Sentience and Other Troubling Issues that Lurk in Turbid Water.” Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, vol. 75, 2007.DeMello, M. Animals and Society. An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies. Columbia University Press, NY 2012. Green, K. & Ginn, F. “The Smell of selfless Love: Sharing Vulnerability with Bees in Alternative Apiculture.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 4, 2014.Haraway, D. When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2007.McWilliams, J. “Loving Animals to Death” http://theamericanscholar.org/loving-animals-to-deathLevin, A. “Animals as Specimens, Zoo Animals as Friends: The Life and Death of Marius the Giraffe.” Environmental Philosophy, 12-1, 2015.Plumwood, V. “Prey to a Crocodile” http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM30/ValPlumwood.htmlRegan, T. “Are Zoos Morally Defensible?” In Animal Ethics Reader, eds. S. J. Armstrong, R. G. Botzler, Routledge 2003.Smith, M., Davidson, J. “’It Makes My Skin Crawl’: The Embodiment of Disgust in Phobias of ‘Nature’.” Body & Society, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2006.The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals http://fcmconference.org/#talksTyler, T. “If Horses Had Hands” http://www.cyberchimp.co.uk/research/horseshands.htmWaldau, P. Animal Studies. An Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013.