Course Title: ANIMALS & SOCIETY
Discipline & Course Number: SOCIOLOGY 2096
Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisite: RDG 100 or Accuplacer Reading score of 80 or equivalent
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them. Central to this course will be an exploration of the ways in which animal lives intersect with human societies. We will also examine how different human groups construct a range of identities for themselves and for others through animals.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Sociology 2096, Animals & Society, is an introductory course intended to promote an understanding of the role that animals play in human social lives.
The student will be able to:
ü Analyze the various ways that animals are used in human societies;
ü Examine the complex biological and social relationships between animals and humans;
ü Identify the reasons for, and consequences of, animal domestication;
ü Understand the ways that human societies have used the representations of animals in art, religion and literature;
ü Describe how animals are used as models or stand-ins for humans in a range of situations;
ü Explore the roots of human language in animal communication;
ü Understand the complex role played by pets in modern society;
ü Understand the range of moral, philosophical and scientific debates in which animals play a major role today.
MEANS OF ASSESSMENT:
Students are required to do all of the readings for the course. Attendance in all classes is mandatory, and attendance will count towards 5% of the grade.
There will be a final, which will stress concepts taken from the lectures and readings, which will be an essay-based final. In addition, students will keep a Journal throughout the class, and will write and research and write an 8-10-page essay, to be based on independent ethnographic fieldwork dealing with the topics in the course.
JUSTIFICATION:
Humans' relationships with animals, increasingly the subject of controversy, have long been of interest to those whose primary aim has been the better understanding of humans' relationships with other humans, i.e., sociologists, anthropologists, and humanists in general. Human-animal relationships can also be considered in historical terms, as well as through a moral or ethical lens, making the field of interest to historians and philosophers as well.
The proposed course, Society & Animals, will offer students from a wide range of disciplines (including Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, History, and Humanities) a course that uses sociological perspectives to understand the relationships between animals and humans throughout history and across cultures.
Society & Animals will appeal to sociology students because it is grounded in sociological theory, and uses sociological approaches to understand a topic that is rarely covered in classes at CNM. Because the course is cross-cultural, it will appeal to anthropology students, and because it's historical, it will appeal to history students; because of its focus on ethical debates surrounding animals, philosophy students will be interested in the course; and cultural studies and humanities students will find the course will, through its examination of animals as representations for human thought, be interested in it as well. Ultimately, the course is directed at all liberal arts students, and many students in the veterinary technician program may find it useful as well.
Society & Animals is an appropriate lower-division course because it uses basic sociological concepts to shed light on the relationships that students, and all of us, have with animals all around us. There is no equivalent course at UNM nor at other colleges in New Mexico, which would make CNM a leader in the state in this exciting, developing interdisciplinary field. Other colleges around the country that teach Society & Animals teach it at either the lower or upper division level, but in all cases that I know of, freshmen and sophomores take the courses in great numbers.
This course was offered Spring 2009 and had 30 students sign up for it. It was a very successful course!
ADDITIONAL COURSE INFORMATION:
There are two required books for this course:
Flynn, Cliff, ed. Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader. 2008.
Kalof, Linda and Amy Fitzgerald, eds. The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. 2007.
There are no specific issues regarding when the course should be offered, or how many times per week.
Students could be recruited through fliers posted around campus, and pitches to classes taught in Sociology, Anthropology, Humanities, Philosophy, History, and Cultural Studies, as well as through the Veterinary Technician department. In addition, I have contacts with local animal organizations and could find additional students that way.
PROPOSER INFORMATION:
Name: Margo DeMello, PhD
Email address/telephone Number: or 505-771-3157
Discipline: Sociology
Preferred term for course to be offered: No preference
I am very well suited to teach this course. I have written two books in Human-Animal Studies and have had animal studies articles published in the Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships and A Cultural History of Animals: The Modern Age. In 2009, my edited collection, Teaching the Animal: Human Animal Studies across the Disciplines, will be released, and I am under contract to write Animals and Society, a textbook in the field, for Columbia University Press.
Topics Course Scheduling Form
Return this form with your topics proposal. This information is needed to facilitate the scheduling process of approved courses.
Name: (Please print) …Margo DeMello, PhD…………..………………………………
Course Title: …Animals & Society……………………………………………………….
This title will be used in the printed schedule of classes. To fit the layout space of the schedule the title cannot contain more than 18 characters (characters constitute letters and spaces).
Dept/Discipline: ……Sociology………………………………………………………
Course No: …2096……………
Course description.
This description will appear in the printed schedule of classes and is limited to 60 words or fewer (please keep within this amount). The description must include prerequisites; if no prerequisite write “none”.
This course explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them. Central to this course will be an exploration of the ways in which animal lives intersect with human societies. We will also examine how different human groups construct a range of identities for themselves and for others through animals.
Prerequisite(s): … RDG 100 or Accuplacer Reading score of 80 or equivalent …………….
I would like this course to be offered in: Fall or Spring
Campus: …Main, Montoya or Westside……………………………
Preferred days & times: …MW or TR daytime hours ……………………….
Second-choice days & times: ………………………………………………….
Additional comments to assist scheduling:
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