ENG127

Description

This course will introduce you to the field of `Animal Studies’, which has emerged in the last three decades and has become a vital subfield of the environmental humanities. By looking closely at the construct of the `animal’ in various literary engagements, the course focuses on pressing questions around what it means to be human. We will consider critical topics such as anthropomorphism and interspecies understanding, while working toward broader conversations regarding agency, empathy, suffering, care, ethics, violence, and kinship. We will consider how animals appear in a variety of literary genres, and open critical discussions of urgent contemporary cultural and ecological issues, including social justice, species preservation, and climate change. What happens if we regard the distinction between the human and animal—what the French philosopher Derrida calls `the question of the animal’—as a central feature of modern culture and power? Does closer attention to the representation of animals make possible a more reciprocal relationship between human and non-human animals? What insights might attention to the animal open up pertaining to the wider human orientation to the environment, ecological sustainability, and climate change? The course will include a `practice’ component that entails site visits and invites reflection on the range of contexts in which humans observe and encounter animals (such as parks, farms, adoption centers, rescue organizations, wildlife refuges, zoos, or aquariums).