Syllabus

Aug 22

Introduction to “Animal Studies” in the Humanities *Animal Studies and Story-Telling
*Animal Studies and Service-Learning
In class hand-outs for discussion:
University of Iowa Policy on animal research
Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) definitions of “animal” Passage from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859)
John Hollander, “Adam's Task” (poem)

Aug 24

Issues for Animal Studies in the Humanities
Erica Fudge, Animal, Introduction and Ch 1: “Visible and Invisible: Questions of Recognition” (7-65)
Elizabeth Hess, Lost and Found: Dogs, Cats, and Everyday Heroes at a Country Animal Shelter, Chs 1-4   (1-135)
Debra Pughe, “Being in Dog Time,” forthcoming in Bark (in Course Pack)  

Commentary 1: After completing the reading, find the animals (real, imaginary, fictional, and in daily language) in your world.   In one page, reflect upon the places you find animals, how they're used, and how the readings offer insight into their real or imaginative functions.

Aug 29

Lost and Found , Chs 4-7 (136-208) and

Vicki Hearne, Adam's Task , (3-17, 42-76)

      Ch 1 “By Way of Explanation”

      Ch 3 “How to Say ‘Fetch!'”

Clinton R. Sanders.   “Killing with Kindness: Veterinary Euthanasia and the Social Construction of Personhood.”   Sociological Forum 10.2 (1995): 195-214 (in Course Pack)

Commentary 2 :   The material we're reading (last week and this week) was partly chosen to help us all anticipate issues you'll encounter in your Center service and also to help us begin thinking about the kinds of “stories” people tell to explain their many responses to animals, choices regarding animals, and, most specifically, work with animal Centers.   Choose two “stories” that you find especially intriguing using at least two texts (that is two from the three: Hearne, Hess, Sanders).   Offer your analysis of those stories by answering these questions in your discussion: 1) what descriptive title would you give each story and why?   2) Who is the main character in the story—whose story is it and how can you tell?   3)   What question, doubt, fear, guilt, pleasure, etc. motivates the story and—whatever the story is about superficially—what choice of words, images, and action suggest that motivation to you?

Note: The “cat people” among you might want to take a look Cat Culture: The Social World of a Cat Shelter by Janet M. Alger and Steven F. Alger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003) about seven years of volunteering at a cat shelter.

Aug 31

Two-hour training session at the Animal Center from 4:30-6:30.   You can meet us at the Center promptly at 4:30 or gather (with cars if you have them) in the EPB parking lot at 4:15 to drive over.   If you cannot fit the two hours into your time slot, you'll need to sign up for one of the regular training sessions at the Center.   Call to sign-up for a session asap.

In advance please read the following training material from the Animal Center.   These are located at http://www.icanimalcenter.org under the section titled “Support.”

• Orientation packet and “Green Dog” Packet (one file)
• Orientation packet and “Green Cat” Packet   (one file)

Sep   5

LABOR DAY HOLIDAY

Sep   7

First Encounters: Animals in Children's Books

Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (1877), Part I and Part II (Chs 1-31)
Vicki Hearne, Adam's Task (117-165)
      Ch 5 “Crazy Horses”
      Ch 6 “Horses in Partnership With Time”

Commentary 3:   Black Beauty was written by a supporter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals both as a novel and as a tract to make the case in fiction that animals should be protected by law.   Sewell used many of the fictional tactics and devices that had been used earlier in anti-slavery stories that tried to convince readers to end slavery in Britain.   Where do you see connections being made to argue for the link the SPCA members saw between human and animal “slavery”?   Do you find this strategy compelling?   Problematic?

Sep 12

Black Beauty , Part III and Part IV (Chs 31-49)
**Commentary 4: One-page proposal for paper 1 due by email
(teresa-mangum@uiowa.edu)

Sep 14

Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
“Mowgli's Brothers,” 5-25
“Tiger-Tiger!,” 55-72
“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” 97-113
“How Fear Came,” 161-178

*Sep 18

PAWS IN THE PARK Event: I'll ask you to make every attempt to attend this event hosted by the Friends of the Animal Center.   The event offers us an opportunity to thank the Center for opening their doors to us.   It will also be an excellent opportunity to gather stories, from talking with people about their choice to adopt a shelter dog to listening to the story-telling contest in which people tell stories of how they “rescued” their dogs.

Sep 19

Center Service: This week only, everyone will have the same task at the Animal Center.   Interview the staff members of the Center to find out what kinds of information and story they would find helpful as we plan the formal questions we'll ask staff, volunteers, people with pets, etc.

Library Research Day: Meet with Kathy Magarrell in Main Library. Prepare by emailing me three questions ( by midnight Sunday, Sep 18 ) about our reading, animal literature in general, a specific text or writer focused on animals, Animal Centers, or a topic about the representation of animals that you're already considering for your final project.   I'll collect and forward these to Kathy so that she can help us with “search” strategies and resources for topics that interest you.

Sep 21

The Beasts in the Backyard

Hearne, Ch 8 “The Sound of Kindness” (172-191)
Hearne, Ch 9 “Lo, the American (Pit) Bull Terrier” (192-223)
Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness

Commentary 5: These two writers seek to find an ethical relationship between humans and animals that have become “pets.”   Drawing upon your observations and experiences at the Center, focus on one of these three pieces that you find especially compelling (or frustrating) and explain what that essay contributes to your understanding of human-animal dynamics at the Center, but also what further questions you would have for the writer and why.

Sep 26

Work Day:   To prepare for your collecting of stories about animals at the Animal Center, drawn from observation and interviews, we'll use today to develop our interview questions.   Please bring the questions you gathered from the Center staff last week to class.   From those lists and questions the Center Director, Misha Goodman, has suggested, we'll develop two sets of interview questions: 1) one for those who work in the Center, including volunteers and 2) one for “the public.”   We'll work today on appropriate interview procedures and on observational skills and discuss strategies for collecting and interpreting stories.   In addition, we'll spend part of the class period practicing those skills by interviewing one another.
***Rough drafts of Paper I due for Writing Fellows

Sep 28

Charles Siebert, Angus: A Memoir

Commentary 6:   Why is this book called “a memoir”?   Look up the word “memoir” in the on-line Oxford English Dictionary .   Which meanings is the writer playing upon?   Whose memoir is it?   Where do you see potential conflict between the story the human is trying to tell and the story the dog might tell if (being wildly anthropomorphic) we could read his mind?

Oct 3

Continue discussion of Angus: A Memoir
Fudge, Animal , Ch 2 “Real and Symbolic: Questions of Difference” (68-111)
Film clips in class of attempts to “capture” animal points of view
(Feel free to bring any you'd like to show the class for our analysis.)

***Paper I Due

Oct 5

Work Day —Reflecting on your work at the Animal Center— Please bring your journals to class.   In class I'll ask for informal reports drawn from your Center journal on the stories you have collected.   To prepare, please choose a few passages you'd especially like to share with the class.   As a group we'll compare experiences and ponder about possible final project possibilities and steps in your observation, reading, research, and reflection you'll need to take for your topic idea

Oct 10

Specie-ial Anxiety: Fears of Border Crossing;
or,   Technology Gone “Wild”

H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)

Screening tba: Cat People (1942, Dir. Jacques Tourneur).   For you filmies, it was produced by Val Lewton, also the force behind the sequel Curse of the Cat People (1944), The Leopard Man (1943), and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) [which was based on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre ]).   You can also see Cat People on your own in the Media Room of Library where it is on reserve or rent the video.   Note, there is also a remake of Cat People (1982, Dir. Paul Schrader) which is more explicitly erotic and which offers a great cat point of view.

Commentary 7: What is The Island of Dr. Moreau about?   What views of animals are expressed in the novel and how?   What separates humans from animals?   OR offer your views of the thematic connections between The Island of Dr. Moreau and Cat People .   How do the two view the line between “the human” and “the animal”?   When and where is that boundary trespassed?   Do they offer the same or different explanations for “the beast within” view of human nature?

Oct 12

The Island of Dr. Moreau and Cat People
Note: Several film versions of The Island of Dr. Moreau also exist, but the best by far is Island of Lost Souls (1933, Dir. Earle C. Kenton).   Try to see it if you can.   It would be a great Halloween party event!

Oct 17

Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs: A Novel

Oct 19

Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs: A Novel

Fudge, Animal , Ch 3 “Intelligence and Instinct: Questions of Power” and Conclusion (113-165)

Commentary 8:   Do you see connections between this novel and The Island of Dr. Moreau and Cat People , or is this novel addressing different concerns about the boundaries between humans and animals?   OR another, far gentler way humans transgress the human/animal boundary, some would argue, is by creating “monster dogs and cats” by treating pets like humans, interpreting their behavior through human norms, judging or punishing them for failing to meet human standards for behavior.   Without judging the humans or animals at the Center, use the novel to reflect upon the ways animals in the Center could be becoming “monster dogs/cats” based on the kinds of decisions multiple humans have made for them.

Oct 24

Animals in the Wild/ The Wild Domesticated

Barbara Gowdy, White Bone

Commentary 9: ***One page proposal describing your final project due

Oct 26

White Bone
John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” In About Looking .   New York: Pantheon Books, 1980: 1-26 (in Course Pack)

Oct 31

Franz Kafka,   “A Report to the Academy” (Course Pack)
George Orwell, “Death of an Elephant” (Course Pack)
Charles Siebert, “What Does an Aging Chimp Do When His Working Days Are Done?,” New York Times Magazine .   July 24, 2005.   Section 6: 28-36, 61-63 (in Course Pack)

***Bibliography due with annotations describing a combination of 10 articles and books you have read in preparation for your final project

Nov   2

The Limits of “Animal-Loving”?

Peter Høeg, The Woman and the Ape

Nov   7

Høeg, The Woman and the Ape

Screening tba : Gorillas in the Mist (1988, Dir. Michael Apted, bio-pic of Dian Fossey) or see it on your own in Media Room of Library where it is on reserve or rent the video.

Commentary 10:   Probably no animal provokes more complicated reactions among humans than apes and chimpanzees.   Why does the woman in the novel make the choices she does?   What larger cultural assumptions about apes is Høeg playing with in the novel?   You might want to enrich your response to that question by looking around you to see how apes are represented in our world—in children's books, cartoons, advertisements, and animal rights web sites, for example.  

Nov   9

Work Day —Reflecting on your work at the Animal Center—

Please bring your journals to class.   In class I'll ask for informal reports drawn from your shelter journal on the stories you have collected.   To prepare, please choose a few passages that you will incorporate (either literally or as an important issue) in your final project to discuss with us.

***Bring a copy of   the rough draft of your final project for your Writing Fellow

Nov 14

Confronting Cruelty: Animal Abuse/Humanimal Violence
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace , Chs 1-12 (1-105)

Commentary 11:   This is a tough novel for many reasons.   You might want to use your commentary just to work through some of your own feelings about the events—which would be fine.   OR discuss the role of the shelter animals in the novel.   How are they a part of the female character?   How are they emblematic of the character and her trauma?   How does the context of South Africa affect your interpretation of the role of the animals?

Nov 16

J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace , Chs 13-24 (106-220)

Note: If you have chosen to use the “alternative commentary” for one of your 10 commentaries, it is due by today at the latest. (See details above under “Assignments.”)

***Center Journals:   Please bring your journal for me to enjoy and reflect upon.   I'll return them during the final exam period.

Commentary 12 (required): Please include a two-page informal commentary along with your journal in which you assess how the experience of working at the Center has affected your understanding of readings for the course and vice versa.   Even if you have criticisms to offer, I will find your insights very helpful as I plan the next version of this course.

I would be especially grateful to know:

• • How working at the Center influenced your responses to our readings
• • Whether you found the Service-Learning approach a useful component of the class and if so why and how
• • Whether you would recommend a Service-Learning course to your friends and why or why not
• • Whether your work for this class has given you an interest in continuing to work for the Center or other community organizations
• • Suggestions you have to help the staff at the Center work more effectively on behalf of the animals
• • What changes you would like to see in the way our community “manages” the problem of unwanted animals and what steps you or others might take to make those changes
• • Whether you would define the work of the Center as a “civic” duty and why or why not

Nov 21

Nov 23

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Nov 28

J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (15-91)

Nov 30

Responses to The Lives of Animals (skim all 4 but sign up to present one of the views to the class along with others who choose your essay)

• Marjorie Garber (73-84)   a scholar of literature (originally Shakespeare) and of cultural studies who wrote a book called Dog Love
• Peter Singer (85-91) a philosopher whose book Animal Liberation helped to launch the animal rights movement in the U.S. and who now works in the field of bioethics
• Wendy Doniger (93-106) an historian of religion (especially early Greek and Indian religions)
• Barbara Smuts (107-120) a professor of psychology and anthropology who has books on the social lives of wild primates and dolphins and is now working on the social lives of dogs

Commentary 13:   (required) Drawing upon your experience at the Center, decide which of the commentator's views you think most helpfully illuminates or challenges questions and opinions you've formed through your work at the Center.   Use your commentary to explain how the writer's response (and Coetzee's fictionalized arguments) shed light on your experience at the Center OR use your Center experience to question the views of the writer's responses.

Dec   5

***Presentations on Final Projects

Dec   7

***Presentations on Final Projects

Final Exam Period:

Wed, Dec 14

4:30-6:30

***Presentations on Final Projects
 

***Final Projects Due at precisely 4:30 (so that you can relax and enjoy our final presentations)

I'll bring treats to pamper us through this long, late time of day.