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Humanities
Description: What can looking at animals tell us about what it means to be human? We eat them, dote on them, treat them as family members, raise them for use as clothing and other commodities, industrialize them, abuse them, adore them, and venerate them. We use them as literary and philosophical tropes, religious symbols, and to delineate the margins of our shifting conceptions of "humanity." Binary terms like "nature/culture" and "human/animal" are ambiguous, overlapping, shifting, and never fully determined, and they change in tandem with cultural and historical contexts. We will try to think beyond these dichotomies and explore the implications these characterizations have on our relationships with the nonhuman animals we rely on for companionship, commerce, and sustenance. We will attend closely to the ways we have constructed notions of "humanity" and human values in relation to and distinct from nonhuman animals, and how these processes mutually influence one another. We will explore literary, cinematic, and philosophical and artistic representations of human and animal relationships and examine the cultural assumptions they reveal about what it means to be human. Letter grade only.
Units: 3
No sections currently offered.
Course Attributes:
Humanities
Term : Spring 2025
Catalog Year : 2024-2025
HUMA 321 - Animals And Others In Humanities
Description: What can looking at animals tell us about what it means to be human? We eat them, dote on them, treat them as family members, raise them for use as clothing and other commodities, industrialize them, abuse them, adore them, and venerate them. We use them as literary and philosophical tropes, religious symbols, and to delineate the margins of our shifting conceptions of "humanity." Binary terms like "nature/culture" and "human/animal" are ambiguous, overlapping, shifting, and never fully determined, and they change in tandem with cultural and historical contexts. We will try to think beyond these dichotomies and explore the implications these characterizations have on our relationships with the nonhuman animals we rely on for companionship, commerce, and sustenance. We will attend closely to the ways we have constructed notions of "humanity" and human values in relation to and distinct from nonhuman animals, and how these processes mutually influence one another. We will explore literary, cinematic, and philosophical and artistic representations of human and animal relationships and examine the cultural assumptions they reveal about what it means to be human. Letter grade only.
Units: 3
No sections currently offered.
Course Attributes:
- GS: Arts & Humanities
- LS: Aesthetic & Humanistic Inquiry