Our Hen House

Teaching the Teachers Who Teach the Animal

Posted on 31. Mar, 2010 by Mariann Sullivan in Class Act

As a newly recognized field of formal study, the subject of human-animal studies is wide open to different approaches, creative ideas for courses, and interdisciplinary techniques. (Anyone want to take me up on the idea of teaching Moby Dick from the whale’s point of view?) It is such an exciting time to be delving into our relationship with animals on an academic level — it makes me want to go back to college and start all over again (or, maybe, go back to college 5 years from now when every university worth its salt will have a major, or at least a minor, in the subject).

One of the signs of the times that such courses of study are ready to take off is the imminent publication of “Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies across the Disciplines.” While a few texts and/or readers, and, of course, gazillions of articles have already been published for use in classes on human-animal studies, this book is the first that we have heard of that actually offers advice to teachers from a wide array of academics on how to teach the course. This should be an enormously valuable resource for professors who would like to start adding human-animal studies courses to their repertoire as well as students trying to persuade their colleges and universities to get with the program.

The book will be published by Lantern and will be out in May.

Photos: Front cover of Teaching the Animal