Investigation of the literary history of animal
being and rights, chiefly in English/Anglophone
poetry and fiction circa 1770-2000 but extending
back to Homer, Genesis, Aesop, Aristotle,
Descartes, and other authors' works prior to the
outset of the animal-rights era and its key texts
by Anna Barbauld, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (esp. "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner"), William Wordsworth, Anna Sewell (in
Black Beauty), and others. We'll explore
what such narratives reveal about the complexity
and ethical perplexity of our relationships to
nonhuman creatures, and the uncanny vistas they
help us to glimpse. We'll also read some relevant,
fairly recent animal-rights theory and philosophy,
and students will conduct some basic research.
being and rights, chiefly in English/Anglophone
poetry and fiction circa 1770-2000 but extending
back to Homer, Genesis, Aesop, Aristotle,
Descartes, and other authors' works prior to the
outset of the animal-rights era and its key texts
by Anna Barbauld, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (esp. "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner"), William Wordsworth, Anna Sewell (in
Black Beauty), and others. We'll explore
what such narratives reveal about the complexity
and ethical perplexity of our relationships to
nonhuman creatures, and the uncanny vistas they
help us to glimpse. We'll also read some relevant,
fairly recent animal-rights theory and philosophy,
and students will conduct some basic research.
- Teacher: Kurt Fosso