Human-Animal Interaction

This four-week course introduces students to the connections between human-animal interactions

and diverse fields including public health, medical ethics, and environmental science. Recently,

disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies, among others, have started “decentering the human”

to consider the complex intertwining of human and non-human lives. Science studies scholar

Donna Haraway suggests that an examination of “radical alterity”—that is, the incomprehensibility

of the life of another species—is productive for imagining alternative futures for global environmental,

medical science, and public health systems. Even if non-human animal lives seems impossible for

humans, we can investigate our personal interactions with responses to animals, and recontextualize them

through cultural histories and other contemporary intellectual practices. This course will be particularly

useful for those interested in veterinary medicine and the need for companion animals; it will also be

relevant to those interested in medicine more broadly as well as environmental studies, public health,

and cultural studies.

Assignments:

Students will work with the instructor to plan a project—either an editorial for a news outlet or

another form of project presentation (such as a video essay) that matches the students’ individual

interests and goals. The seminar will devote one Zoom-type lesson to discussions of readings

and case study analysis and another on workshopping projects every week. The course may involve

an in-person field trip, but this option is currently uncertain due to ongoing concerns over COVID-19

and public health.