Where knowledge and science meet ethics and compassion

HAS Courses in Interdisciplinary Fields

Tami Harbolt-Bosco

Animal Studies. This class will introduce students to the history and philosophy of animal rights and welfare. The 19th century and 20th century humane movements coincided with other historical social rights movements, such as temperance, abolition, suffrage, and civil rights. Studying the rights of animals allows for a reading of Western culture that considers gender, class, ethnicity, the role of scientific authority, and an exploration of the species boundary.

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Aubrey Fine

Animal Assisted Interventions and Education. This class is a graduate class geared for educators and those working in schools.

Community College of Baltimore County, Dundalk

Animals and Society. This course explores the ways animals are viewed by various subcultures in American society. Students explore sociological, historical, economic, philosophical, and public policy issues regarding the treatment of animals, the uses of animals in factory farming, medical research, hunting and trapping, and the entertainment industry.

DePaul University, School for New Learning

Betta LoSardo

Externship: Animals in Contemporary Life. Students will pursue literature on the historical connections between animals and humans, and will review philosophies concerning treatment of animals. Students will also be exposed to current issues in animal welfare, including a volunteer experience in an animal shelter. Faculty will provide a framework for assessing the roles and condition of animals, particularly domestic animals, in our culture. Assigned readings range from Peter Singer's noted work on animal experimentation Animal Liberation to excerpts from Black Elk Speaks, a Native American treatise on hierarchy and respect for life in American aboriginal culture. Students will pursue their own interests through further readings and commentary.

Drury University

Patricia McEachern

Animal Ethics. This cutting-edge multidisciplinary course is designed to acquaint the student with the contemporary and historical animal-rights issues. A primary goal of the course is to raise moral consciousness about the most current conditions and uses of nonhuman animals and therein the ethical dimension of relationships between nonhuman animals and human beings. The course is structured in two sections: a) ethical theory and b) applied ethics.

The course will be team taught by professors from across the disciplines. Students will study a range of issues related to nonhuman animals including the animal rights debate, spay/neuter issues, vivisection, animal law, animal fighting, views of nonhuman animals in various religious traditions, sustainability, associations between animal abuse and interpersonal violence, factory farming hoarding, wildlife control, and overpopulation. In addition to Drury faculty, guest speakers will address such issues as puppy mills, animal control, and issues related to local animal shelters. The course will include a visit to an animal shelter or zoo. By the end of the course, students will have continued to develop the ability to read thoughtfully, think critically and imaginatively and communicate ideas powerfully
in writing and speaking.

Eastern Kentucky University

Robert Mitchell

Introduction to Animal Studies. A survey of the field of animal studies, focusing on animals' lives and histories, and the human experience of animals as food, as objects of entertainment, spectacle and science, as companions, and as representations. The course will introduce students to the field of animal studies by reading, discussing, thinking, and writing about various traditions in the field, including anthropology, art, biology, history, literature philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

Humane Society University

Marion Copeland

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Animal Studies. Animal Studies, a rapidly growing and evolving field, provides an interdisciplinary approach to examining both human-animal relations (the changing roles of animals in society and of the evolution of human attitudes to other animals) and the animals themselves. The February 2008 Minding Animals Conference Newsletter (www.mindinganimals.com) announced that "The new transdisciplinary field of Animal Studies has arrived." The first conference convened in July 2009, brought together animal theorists and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines, with government officials from several nations, representatives from non government organizations and representatives from industry, to examine the interrelationships between human and nonhuman animals from cultural, historical, geographical, environmental, representational (arts and literature), moral, legal and political perspectives. By 2011 Minding Animals Conferences are scheduled in major cities all around the planet. Further updates can be found at: http://www.aasg.org.au/bulletins While a bit less ambitious, this course, drawing through interview and publications on the expertise of scholars in a sampling of the disciplines currently involved in Animal Studies, examines what each discipline contributes to Animal Studies and, in turn, what Animal Studies is contributing to the disciplines considered, and how these combined endeavors serve to enhance understanding and improve the welfare and status of nonhuman animals.

Humane Society University

Kitty Block, Michael Greger, Kelly O'Meara, Andrew Rowan, Sarah Stewart, Teresa Telecky

Global Animal Issues

Animal welfare advocacy has typically been focused locally (e.g. shelters) and nationally (e.g. changing laws and corporate behavior). However, in the past thirty years, a significant international advocacy movement has emerged that is promoting animal welfare issues to international agencies and developing coalitions to prevent animal suffering across the globe. This course tracks the development of the international animal protection movement and examines its tactics and impact over a range of issues.

Loyola Marymount University

George Jacobs

Teaching about the Interaction of Humans and Other Animals. Human interactions with our fellow animals have a major impact on other animals and on us. This course explores how these interactions can be included in our teaching. Topics include a debate about animals in schools, exploring literature, movies, tv and cartoon interactions as well as food, disease, communities and service learning. Online Course

Loyola Marymount University

Do Dogs Smile? A Study of Animal Intelligence and Emotions. This course is designed to provide an overview of animal intelligence and emotion, and evidence of these traits. Included materials provide an intimate look at Koko demonstrating her ability to communicate in sign language, an examination of animal intelligence and emotion in the wild with observations of wolves, chimps and great apes; and a revealing talk with a professor of marine science who specializes in dolphin intelligence.

Madonna University

Andrew Domzalski

Do Animals Matter? This course is an examination of religious, philosophical, cultural, aesthetic, and societal conceptualizations of animals and their impact on human-animal relations as well as on uses, treatment, and legal standing of animals. Issues are discussed through the lenses of humanities, religious studies, and social sciences within the framework of the Franciscan tradition. This course includes a service learning project.

New Century College/George Mason University

Paul Gorski

Animal Rights and Human Exploitation. Participants in this learning community will engage with a combination of critical theories, experiential learning, and dialogical practices to examine the ways in which non-human animals are exploited for human profit. We will explore, as well, the ramifications of this exploitation ecologically, as a question of sustainability, and spiritually, as a question of the impact of animal abuse on the human spirit. Among the animal rights concerns we will examine are the use of animals in entertainment, factory farming, animal testing, and sport or trophy hunting. We will discuss, as well, how individuals and organizations are fighting these practices.

Tufts University

Animals in Society I and II. These courses are part of Tufts' Center for Animals and Public Policy's Masters Program in Animals and Public Policy

Tufts University

Human Animal Studies. These courses are part of Tufts' Center for Animals and Public Policy's Masters Program in Animals and Public Policy

Tufts University

Paul Waldau

Religion, Science and Other Animals. Focuses on how nonhuman animals have been seen in both religious and scientific circles. Prompts the student to ask a wide range of questions, including: 1) to what extent have religious traditions affected the ways in which contemporary scientists view and speak about animals other than humans?, and 2) in what ways do contemporary religious traditions now deal with new findings of various life sciences that are pertinent to an understanding of nonhuman animals? Answers to these questions are explored in several ways, including an examination of whether the vocabularies and concepts used by those who practice both the physical and "softer" sciences when talking about animals outside the human species remain value-laden. The course also seeks clarification of the claims about other animals generally implicit and explicit in many religious traditions' writings and beliefs.

University of New Mexico

Marsha Baum

Advocating for Animals. In this seminar, we will explore the legal and political status of nonhuman animals in the U.S. by examining the development of law for companion animals, wildlife, captive animals, and animals used in industry and research. We will begin the exploration through discussions of readings and films and trips to facilities such as the zoo, a shelter, and a farm. Finally, our classroom will become a setting for advocacy regarding the legal status of animals, with mock trials, debates, and negotiations to allow each student to develop and present arguments on either side of the issues presented in real-life problems. Assignments include team preparation for advocacy projects, written student impressions of various topics, and a research paper.

University of Connecticut

Laurel Rabschutz

Introduction to the Human Animal Bond. The human/animal bond (HAB) is a mutually beneficial and dynamic relationship between people and non-human animals. This course is a review of the changing role of animals in our lives and how we interact with them. The class will discuss how the HAB is used to promote quality of life in humans through animal assisted activities. In addition, we will discuss how animals are integrated into the treatment of physical and psychological health of humans.

University of California, Santa Cruz

Donna Haraway

Animal Studies as Science Studies

University of California, Santa Cruz

Donna Haraway

Plants, Animals, Science, Food, and Justice. This course is organized around the knots of plants, animals, knowledges, people, markets, research institutions, justice projects, and daily life that come together in practices of eating. Food is at the heart of the quarter. Students will begin by keeping a detailed diary of everything they eat and then write an account of the worlds brought into play by the entries in that diary.

University of California, Santa Cruz

Donna Haraway

When Species Meet: Categories, Encounters, and Co-Shapings. Consider related, but non-isomorphic, constitutive binaries prominent in western traditions that have focused feminist attention: Man/woman, human/animal, culture/nature, white/color, civilized/primitive, mind/body, sight/touch, normal/abnormal, etc. Themes: Thickening inter-sectionality in feminist theory, "human exceptionalism," defining species relationally, animalization/racialization/beastialization, "we are what we eat," ethics for human animals, metamorphoses within a philosophical tradition. What does feminist theory have to say about species, human-animal co-shapings, and the problem of categories for humans and animals? To morph Bruno Latour's "we have never been modern," I suggest that we have never been human. Post-humanism and the posthuman do not get this point. What happens if the ontological dance is 'companion species' all the way down?

University of Vermont

Eileen Crist

Animals, Science, & Technology. This graduate seminar investigates topics in critical animal studies in the historical wake of what has been called "the animal turn." We will focus on developments in science, philosophy, ethics, and activism that explore inquiry into animal minds, the boundary between human and animal, the uses of animals for food, experiment, and entertainment, and the predicament of wild animals in modernity and in the animal economy.

University of Washington

Maria Elena Garcia

Animals: Articulating Human and Non-Human Struggles. How are animal rights and feminist movements connected? Does eating meat perpetuate notions of patriarchy? Can we successfully challenge the exploitation of human beings without also fighting for the rights of non-human animals? Can we morally distinguish between human and non-human exhibitionism? How do notions of class structure our choices about eating habits? This course explores some ethical, political, and cultural questions regarding animals, or as philosopher Peter Singer calls them, non-human animals. Specifically, it looks at the cultural production of difference between humans and non-humans, as well as the tactics, strategies, and ideologies behind animal rights movements. Drawing on debates in anthropology, philosophy, literature, and politics, this course invites students to interrogate the discourses and practices that reduce animals to "inferior beings." The class also asks students to critically examine their own relationships with animals, to explore cultural debates about animals and the environment, vegetarianism, the industrial food complex, health, zoos, and animal experimentation (among other topics), and to think about the discourse of "rights" more concretely. Moreover, this seminar will emphasize the significance of the animal rights movement and its connections to other global movements for cultural, social and environmental justice.

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Anne McClintock

Empire of the Ark. The Animal Question, Spectacle and Carceral Modernity. Empire of the Ark is an interdisciplinary engagement with the burgeoning field of animal studies, spanning the century from the decline of the British empire to the decline of the US empire. Throughout the course we will explore a range of texts, theories, novels, essays, photographs, and films. We will engage a range of critical approaches but will draw primarily on cultural materialism.

Why has the theme of animals had such recent resurgence? Can our vexed preoccupation with animals be seen, in part, as a requiem for the animals disappearing so rapidly and traumatically from our immediate, intimate lives and from our social landscapes? For centuries we human primates lived amongst other animals in intimate proximity. We touched animals, smelled them, worked with them, sacrificed and ate them, slept alongside them. Animals were our first horizon, as John Berger notes. Zoos became the monument to their disappearance.

How do we now know what we know about animals? How do we see animals? How do we watch and engage them? Why has spectacle and looking, film and photography, become our primary mode of interaction? Why, with the Enlightenment, did the Western eye become the privileged organ of knowledge and authority over animals? What is the difference between looking at animals, watching animals, and being with animals? What do we not see (slaughter houses, mega-agrifarms, habitat destruction, environmental catastrophes such as the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf)?

Wesleyan University

Kari Weil

Thinking Animals: An Introduction to Animal Studies. The question of "the animal" has become a recent focus across the disciplines, extending debates over identity and difference to our so-called "non-speaking" others. This course will examine a range of theories and representations of the animal in order to examine how human identity and its various gendered, classed, and racial manifestations have been conceived of through and against notions of animality, as well as how such conceptions have affected human-animal relations and practices such as pet-keeping and zoos. We will seek to understand the desire to tame or objectify animals as well as evidence of a contrasting desire that they remain guardians of inaccessible experience and knowledge. Readings may include: Darwin, Poe, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, Coetzee, Hearne.

Wesleyan University

Kari Weil

Animal Subjects. Humanity, within the Western tradition, has largely been defined in opposition to "the animal," especially by reserving the notion of subjectivity for humans. But what happens to the understanding of the human when the very foundations of subjectivity such as thought, language and moral agency, are said to be possessed by at least some animals? This course will focus on recent efforts in literature, philosophy and the arts to redress the humanist bias regarding subjectivity and come to grips with the consequences of human animality.

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