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Interrelations between human and non-human animals have been discussed inside and outside the academia for centuries. Today, consumers in industrialized societies share their lives with companion animals, enjoy the presentation of animals in the entertainment business, and accept “absent” animals as commodities in the meat market sector. A critical reassessment of anthropocentrism has promoted the development of Human Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies, especially since the Animal Turn (Ritvo, 2007). Human societies and their ethical standards might be reflected in their behavior towards, relations to, and their construction and treatment of non-human animals. The othering of animals as seemingly inferior to humans has been a strategy of human exceptionalism to obtain power and control over the Other ever since. (Critical) Human Animal Studies therefore intersect with Gender Studies, (Post-)Colonial Studies, and Settler Colonial Studies when investigating strategies of dehumanizing/animalizing the Other.
This course mostly focusses on narratives of contact, conflict, and coexistence in human-animal interrelations and dichotomous constructions of the non-human animal. We will explore various debates around human/non-human interrelations in theory, literature, and visual works from North America. How for example do diverse documents either reproduce a speciesist status quo or propagate innovative perspectives and thus offer alternative pathways to co-existence and even co-citizenship. Please note that some works might contain disturbing material on the treatment of non-human animals.
A Sprintout reader will be available from April as well as a Moodle platform. Information regarding course requirements and materials will be provided in the first session. Feel free to browse through Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (2010), Lori Gruen’s Ethics and Animals (2012), Nik Taylor’s Humans, Animals, and Society: Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (2013), or Steven Spielberg’s film War Horse (2011). Please register for this course via AGNES. |
