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MSU Courses in Animal-Human Relationships
Animals and Social Transformations (SOC 840) is taught by Sociology Professor Linda Kalof and will be offered Spring semesters. The course is an historical overview of the cultural relationship between humans and other animals and how those relationships have changed with changing social conditions. Both visual imagery and extracts from historical and literary sources will be used to experience the human-animal story throughout history. The course draws on a wealth of information about the animal-human relationship, covering a range of topics rarely discussed in animal cultural studies, such as the Black Plague, dead animal portraiture and animal rituals that reflect hierarchies of gender, race and class, including the medieval backwards ride, horning ceremonies and animal massacres. The course will be taught every Spring primarily to graduate students in sociology, history and anthropology, but is open to all interested students in the university. Contact Linda Kalof at LKalof@msu.edu .
Contemporary Issues in Animal-Human Relationships (ACR 823) is a graduate seminar offered Fall semesters. Professor Kalof teaches the course to all interested graduate students, with a focus on students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The seminar will examine one of the most fiercely debated topics in contemporary science and culture: the animal question – or, what is the fitting role of animals in human culture and of humans in animal culture? Through the lens of interdisciplinary contemporary scholarship, the course covers: 1) animals as philosophical and ethical subjects, 2) animals as reflexive thinkers, 3) animals as domesticates, "pets" and food, 4) animals as spectacle and sport, 5) animals as symbols, and 6) animals as scientific objects. Finally, students will examine the thorny question of the meaning of nature and its reconfiguration from a binary purified category to a fluid nature-culture network composed of actants-in-relation (including humans, nonhumans, technologies, the organic and the mechanic). Contact Linda Kalof at LKalof@msu.edu .
