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Animal Planet: Tentative Reading Schedule

 

All readings and writing assignments are due on corresponding dates. Note: this is a tentative schedule and is subject to change according to the needs of the class. Please make sure you keep up with any changes.

 

Week One

Developing The Questions

T 1/19

Course Introduction. Student Introductions. Syllabus & Schedule of Readings. Basic Introduction to Themes, Issues, Readings of the Core Seminar.

 

R 1/21

Bible: Genesis/Acts (photocopy)

Luther Standing Bear, “Nature” (photocopy)

White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” (photocopy)

 

Week Two

Reading Nature: Constructing Conceptions of Nature

T 1/26

Vogel, “Nature as Origin and Difference: On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought” (EP)

Leopold, “The Land Ethic” (EP)

Thoreau, “Walking” (photocopy)

 

R 1/28

Devall & Sessions, “Deep Ecology” (photocopy)

Zimmerman, “Deep Ecology, Ecoactivism, and Human Evolution” (PDF, on WebCT under Readings/Deep Ecology/Zimmerman: Deep Ecology—link to WebCT here.)

Eiseley, “The Bird and the Machine” (photocopy)

 

Week Three

Reading Nature: Regarding/Responding to Nature

T 2/2

Grula, “Pantheism Reconstructed: Ecotheology as a successor to the Judeo-Christian, Enlightenment, and Postmodernist Paradigms” (PDF, on WebCT under Readings/Deep Ecology/Pantheism & Deep Ecology—link to WebCT here.)

Rolston, “Challenges in Environmental Ethics” (EP)

Oliver, “Five A. M. in the Pinewoods” (photocopy)

Bishop, “The Fish” (photocopy)

 

R 2/4

Taylor, “Ethics of a Respect for Nature” (EP)

Goodpaster, “On Being Morally Considerable” (EP)

Merwin, “Unchopping a Tree” (photocopy)

 

Week Four

Reading Nature: Ecofeminism

T 2/9

Warren, “The Power and Promise of Ecofeminism Revisited” (EP)

Cuomo, “Ethics and the Ecofeminist Self” (EP)

Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” (photocopy)

 

R 2/11

Holmquiest and Khardalian, Bullshit (documentary)

Shiva, “The Impoverishment of the Environment: Women and Children Last” (EP)

 

Week Five

Reading Nature: Humans as Part or Apart from Nature

T 2/16

Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

R 2/18

First Exam (first part of class)

 

Week Six

Humans & Animals: Basic Questions/Historical Perspectives and the Role of Narrative

 

T 2/23

Taylor, Animals and Ethics (Chapters 1 & 2)

Herzog, Grizzly Man (documentary)

 

R 2/25

Foer, “Storytelling” (photocopy)

Descartes (selections: webct)

Hume (selections: webct)

Walker, “Am I Blue” (photocopy)

 

Week Seven

Humans & The Natural World

T 3/2

Solar Storms (first half)

Sturgeon, “Naturalizing Race: Indigenous Women and White Goddesses” (EP)

Gaard, “Explosion” (webct)

 

R 3/4

Solar Storms (finish)

Silko, “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination” (photocopy)

 

Week Eight

Moral Status and the Suffering of Animals

 

T 3/9

Millet, “Girl and Giraffe” (photocopy)

Singer, “All animals are equal” (EP)

Singer, “Equality for animals?” (photocopy)

 

R 3/11

Millet, “Prince Henry” (photocopy)

Frey, “Why Animals lack beliefs and desires” (photocopy)

Becker, “The Priority of Human Interests” (photocopy)

Carruthers, “Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical Theory” (webct)

 

First Integrative Essay Due

 

Week Nine: Spring Break

 

Week Ten

Moral Status: Zoos, Speciesism & Humanisim

 

T 3/23

[Cancelled]

 

R 3/25

Taylor, Animals and Ethics (Chapter 3)

Regan, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs” (EP)

Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights” (photocopy)

 

------------From Monday, will talk about it, but no major responsibility----------------------------------

[Ackerman, The Zookeepers Wife

Ralph Acampora, “Zoos and Eyes: Contesting Captivity and Seeking Successor Practices” (webct)

MacDonald, “Pushing the Limits of Humanity? Reinterpreting Animal Rights and “Personhood” Through the Prism of the Holocaust”  (webct)]

 

Week Eleven

Moral Status and Animal Rights

T 3/30

Frey, “Against Animal Rights” (photocopy)

White, “Why Animals cannot have rights” (photocopy)

Oliver, “What Is Wrong with (Animal) Rights?” (webct)

 

R 4/1

[Cancelled]

 

Week Twelve

The Lives of Animals—Living with the Fate of Animals

T 4/6

Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

 

 

R 4/8

Second Exam

Galkin, I Am an Animal (documentary)

 

Week Thirteen

Eating (with) Animals

T 4/13

Taylor, Animals and Ethics (Chapter 4)

Bruckner, “Considerations on the Morality of Meat Consumption: Hunted-Game versus Farm-Raised Animals” (webct)

George, “Should Feminists be Vegetarians?” (webct)

[Replies from Gaard & Gruen, Adams, Donovan and George’s reply—suggested, webct]

Ozeki, My Year of Meats

 

R 4/15

Ozeki, My Year of Meats

Kenner, Food, Inc. (documentary)

 

Week Fourteen

Learning through the bodies of Animals

T 4/20

Taylor, Animals and Ethics Chapter 5

Frey & Patton, “Vivisection, Morals, and Medicine: an exchange” (photocopy)

Millet, “Love in Infant Monkeys” (photocopy)

 

R 4/22

Pepperberg, Alex and Me

Slicer, “Your Daughter or Your Dog? A Feminist Assessment of the Animal Research Issue” (webct)

 

Week Fifteen

Animal Dystopia

T 4/27

Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Degrazia, “Human-animal Chimeras: Human Dignity, Moral Status, and Species Prejudice” (webct)

Cooley & Goreham, “Are Transgenic Organisms Unnatural?” (webct)

 

R 4/29

Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Almond, “Commodifying animals: ethical issues in genetic engineering of animals” (webct)

 

Week Sixteen

Animals as Companions

T 5/4

Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto

Hanrahan “Dog Duty” (webct)

 

R 5/6

Bruns, “Derrida's Cat (Who Am I?)”

Derrida, The Animal That I Am (excerpt, photocopy)

.

Week Seventeen

Beastly Economies

T 5/11

Psihoyos, The Cove (documentary)

Watson, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (photocopy)

Hawkin, “Seeing ourselves as primates” (webct)

Second Integrative Essay due

R 5/13

Third Exam