If You Teach a Great Animal Studies Course, You Deserve a Prize!

You know, it’s really great that animal studies (or, as it’s called in some places, human-animal studies, or in some others, anthrozoology, or in yet others, probably something else — it’s hard to keep track), is taking off in a big way on college campuses. It shows that people’s interest in animals, and, no doubt, their anxieties about our deeply, deeply troubled relationship with them, are rising. In fact, they’re becoming the subject of serious academic inquiry.
But, let’s face it, there are animal studies courses that delve with sincerity into these issues and help people understand the enormous shifts that are necessary in the way we relate to our fellow earthlings, and there are animal studies courses that seem to start with the premise that the study of our relationship with animals is just one more intellectual area of interest, and seek to do no more than to inquire into, and reinforce, the status quo.
If you yourself are teaching a course that you believe really fulfills the highest goals of animal studies, you need some recognition and promotion. The battle is on for who is going to control this field. One way you might go about that is to think about submitting your course for consideration for an Animals and Society Course Award. (And if you’re taking such a course, you need to encourage your professor to apply.) For the 13th year, the Humane Society of the United States, along with the Animals & Society Institute, will be making two awards — one for an established course and one for a new course, at either the undergraduate or graduate level, at colleges and universities worldwide.
Each award carries a prize of $1,500, and, even more importantly, the prestige that comes with recognition that your course, and your school, has achieved excellence in educating your students about subjects such as the human-animal bond, human obligations toward animals, and the status of animals. Since animal studies is a cross-disciplinary field, the subject matter of eligible courses can vary dramatically, and, indeed, past recipients have included scholars working in huge variety of academic fields, including animal science, animal-assisted therapy, anthropology, archeology, art, biology, communications, culture studies, education, environmental studies, ethology, history, law, literature, medicine, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, sociology and veterinary medicine.
The deadline for submission is October 15, 2012.