Reading Animals: Animals in American Literature and Theory 3301-LA2228
The perspective of animal studies – often associated with posthumanism, ecocriticism and environment al humanities – is increasingly gaining recognition in contemporary literary theory. This perspective makes is possible to both re-read canonical literary oeuvres and to conceptualize the change that can currently be observed in contemporary literature, that is the foregrounding of the human-animal relationship, often in the context of basic ethical questions. The goal of the course is to develop the students’ interest in the new critical perspective of animal studies and to provide them with the tools required to use this perspective in order to critically read works of American literature and American movies. The course opens with a theoretical introduction that contextualizes the increased interest in animals in lilterature and culture as part of the larger turns in critical theory, mostly the interest in the relationship of ethics and literature, the affective turn and the counterlinguistic turn (Derrida 2002, Wolfe 2003, Weil 2012).
Next, using theoretical texts (Glenney Boggs 2012) and historical sources (Anderson 2004), the students analyze the role of animals and the concept of animality as foundational for the shaping of early American identity. Students re-read canonical literary texts (or their fragments) with emphasis on the human-animal dynamics, the notion of animality and the needs for breaking away from animality discernable particularly in the writings of ethnic minorities.
Representations of animals in sentimental fiction and the use of these ‘sentimental animals’ for the purposes of achieving social change constitute the next general theme of analysis. The feminization of the companion animal (Mason 2005), the use of animal imagery and animal-related comparisons in social campaigns from abolitionism to antivivisectionism are also a topic of analysis.
American naturalism, fascinated with the concept of wildness, presents the human-animal relationship in a completely different light than sentimentalism, one which cannot be fully understood without recourse to changes in gender roles at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (Shukin 2012).
Even though modernist literature is usually disinterested in deep psychological portraits of animals, assuming the animal studies perspective makes it possible to read certain canonical texts of modernism (for example Hemingway’s short stories about hunting) in a new light (Armstrong 2008, Wolfe 2003).
In contemporary literature, reflection on the human-animal bond – that is, both a bond between an individual human and a specific animal serving as a springboard for broader refection (e.g. Mark Doty) but also a more abstract postanthropocentric reflection about the place of humans in a non-fully human world – often becomes the primary theme of literary works. In this segment of the course, students analyze the formal strategies used by contemporary authors to enable such reflection, contrasting them with strategies used in the past.
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Students will be able to:
- understand key terminology, well established methods and theories of animal studies (K_W02)
- describe methodology and recent developments in animal studies (K_W03)
- list the characteristics of English grammar, syntax, phonology, phonetics, morphology and pragmatics on an advanced level (K_W05)
- explain principles of designing studies of literary and cultural texts, with special focus on selecting appropriate methods and tools in formulating research questions (K_W07)
Abilities
Students will be able to:
- employ the terminology and methodological tools from literary and cultural studies (K_U01)
- employ the methodology of cultural studies within English studies, respecting the ethical norms and copyright law (K_U02)
- implement knowledge to describe a problem and identify means to solve it, thereby completing a project in representations of animals in a selected cultural text (K_U04)
- design one’s own development (K_U11)
Social competences
Students will be ready to:
- undertake life-long learning and personal development, applying skills and competences to select subjects and projects within the course (K_K02)
- value responsibility for one’s own work and respect the work of others, adhering to the professional and ethical norms in various projects and other activities undertaken during the course (K_K03)
Education at language level B2+.
Assessment criteria
Average from the following segments of the course:
response papers -- 20%
group presentation -- 30%
final test (written) -- 50%
Over 50% must be obtained in each category
Three absences are allowed.
Retake exam in the same form as the final test.
Bibliography
Virginia Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2004)
Edgar Allan Poe, selected stories
Frederick Douglass, excerpts The Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1881)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, excerpts Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851, excerpts)
Mark Twain “A Dog’s Tale” (1903)
Susan Glaspell “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917)
Edith Wharton “Kerfol” (1915)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, excerpts Herland (1915)
Jack London, „To Build a Fire” (1908), Call of the Wild (1924, excerpts)
Ernest Hemingway, selected short stories
William Faulkner „The Bear” (1942)
Ursula K. Le Guin “Mazes” (1975)
Doris Lessing “An Old Woman and Her Cat” (1974)
Mark Doty, The Dog Years (2007)
T.C. Boyle, selected short stories
THEORETICAL TEXTS
Erica Fudge "Pets" (2011)
Kari Weil, „Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now?” (2012)
Susan McHugh and Robert McKay „Being and Seeing Literary Animals” (2004)
Jacques Derrida, „The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)” (2002)
Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (2008), fragmenty; Companion Species Manifesto, excerpts (2003)
Jennifer Mason, Civilized Creatures: Urban Animals and American Literature, 1850-1900
Colleen Glenney Boggs, Animalia Americana (2012), excerpts
Phillip Armstrong, What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (2008), fragmenty
Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital (2009), excerpts, “Feeling Power” (2012)
Susan McHugh, Animal Stories: Narrating Across Species Lines (2011)
Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites (2003), excerpts
Additional information
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