Spring 2008 Advance Course Information

This information effective for spring 2008. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Literature

[ LIT-101 ]

101. Theory and Interpretation: Animal Theory.
(formerly Theory and Interpretation: Post-humanism and the Question of the Animal)

Instructor: Carla Freccero
Phone: 9-3342 (office), 9-1924 (messages)
E-mail: freccero@ucsc.edu

Teaching Assistants: Allison Athens, Jessica Beard, Andrea Quaid, Christina Stevenson, James Wallen

Meetings: Stevenson 150; T, Th 8-9:45; optional extra session Th 10-11:30;
occasional Wednesdays will be scheduled

Course Description

This course is reading and writing intensive. The readings are generally quite short and not difficult, but some are very difficult and some are long. You’ll be expected to keep up with both. Extensions and absences must be approved in advance and only the instructor may approve them. You will not receive an A for the course if you are absent more than three times; you will not receive a B if you do not submit all the written work.

1) Attendance
2) Reading (reading must be done by the date under which it appears)
3) one paper a week, for a total of nine papers (most will be two pages; some will be longer; topics will be assigned). Papers should have a cover sheet.

Cover sheet: 1) title of paper; 2) your name and date; 3) the name of your TA; 4) argument of paper; 5) what worked best; 6) what worked least well (what could be improved); 7) what you would like feedback on. Your name and page number should appear on each page as a header, except for the first page, which should contain the title and your name and your TA’s name. Papers should be space-and-a-half, 12-point font, grammatically correct with correct spelling of words, and the pages should be stapled together (not paper-clipped). Papers are due on Tuesdays.

In spite of all this, and of the time of day, I am hoping we will have fun.

Required Texts

• Two-volume reader available from the Literary Guillotine, Locust St, (831) 457-1195, http://www.literaryguillotine.com
  
• JM Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton 1999)
• Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald, ed. The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings (Oxford/NY: Berg, 2007)

Recommended Texts

• Robert Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz, Kafka (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2007)
• Jonathan Miller and Borin van Loon, Darwin for Beginners (NY: Pantheon, 1982)
• Jean Henri Fabre, Fabre’s Book of Insects (NY: Dover, 1998)
• Sue Coe, Dead Meat (NY/London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995)

Schedule

The Animals Reader (AR): weeks 1-5, read parts one and five; weeks 6-7, read parts two and three; weeks 8-10, read parts four and six. Additionally, you will be asked to read specific individual essays in the schedule below. All readings, except as indicated, appear in the Reader for the course.

Week I: Origin Stories
T 4/1    Le Guin, “She Unnames Them”
Th 4/3  The Epic of Gilgamesh (tablets I and II); Genesis 1-3; Atwood, “The Animals reject their names” (narrative poem); Plutarch (“Eating Flesh” in AR)

Week II: More Origins
T 4/8    Homer, Odyssey Book X (narrative poem); Hearne, “Calling Animals by their Names”; La Fontaine, “Ulysses’ Companions” (poem); Aristotle, (“History of Animals” AR); Descartes (“Letters” in AR); Descartes, “Discourse on the Method, part 1 and 5”; La Fontaine, “Disquisition…Mme de la Sabliere” (poem); REC: Warner, “The Enchantments of Circe”

Paper 1: construct a two-page non-human-centered origin story; choose a format or genre from the available reading (can be a poem, prose, fiction, non-, etc.)

Th 4/10 Darwin, “Natural Selection,” and “Conclusion”; Cartmill, “A Fatal Disease”; Barthes, “Wine” and “Steak”

Week III: Humans, Hybrids, Others
T 4/15 Marie de France, “Bisclavret” (short narrative poem; translation in prose); Seth, “Difference”; Bynum, “Shape and Story”; Pliny, “On the Human Animal, book 7”; REC: L. Dunton-Downer, “Wolf and Man”

Paper 2: summarize an argument from one of the readings, especially Darwin, Cartmill, Seth, or Bynum (2 pages)

Th 4/17 Ritvo, “Border Trouble” (long, hard)

Week IV: Humanisms and Speciesisms
T 4/22 Wolfe, “Old Orders for New” (long, hard); Adams, “The Arrogant Eye”; Singer, “All Animals are Equal” (long); Atwood, Landcrab II” (poem); Woolf, “Moth” (short story)

Paper 3: do a two-page reading of one of the texts [preferably one of the fictional/poetic primary texts; can also be Montaigne, Kafka, or Levinas below]
 
Th 4/24 Montaigne, “Apology” (use the version in my reader not in AR)
Kafka, “A Report to the Academy” (short story); Levinas, “The Name of a Dog” [if possible also read “Ethical Cynicism” essay included]

Week V: Comparisons, Symbols, Analogies [really hard reading week]
T 4/29 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (“The Philosophers,” and “The Poets”); Walker, “Am I Blue?”; Spiegel, from The Dreaded Comparison (“An Historical Understanding”); Dunayer, “Sexist Words”; Borges, “The Other Tiger” (poem); re-read Barthes; REC: Bekoff, “Representing and Misrepesenting”; Hacking, “Our Fellow Animals” (a review of Coetzee)

Paper 4: Pick one essay from AR part 5 and do a two-page summary; or discuss how Walker, Barthes, Borges or Coetzee’s character confront the issue/question of animal symbolism, analogy, or (more genral), comparison [and explain which of these 3 terms you are talking about]     

Th 5/1 Serpell, “Anthropomorphism”; Schiesari, “The Face of Domestication”; Las Casas, “The Kingdom of New Granada”; REC: Serpell, “People in Disguise”; Fudge, “Real and Symbolic: Questions of Difference” (really good but long)

Week VI: Thinking-With
T 5/6    Bekoff, “Animal Minds”; Heidegger, “The Animal is Poor in World”; Calvino, “In the Belly of the Gecko” (short story); Fischer, “Animal Communication” (long); REC: Fischer, ch. 2 on “The Talking Ape”

Paper 5: Do a two-page summary of one of the other essays in The Lives of Animals

Th 5/8  Smuts, “Encounters with Animal Minds” (long); Nagel, “What is it Like to be a Bat?” (hard); Butler, “Bloodchild” (short story); Deleuze and Guattari, “Becoming-Animal” (in AR)

Week VII: Feeling-With
T 5/13  Bekoff, “Animal Emotions”; Lorenz, “The Perennial Retainers” (long, but fun!); Lorenz, “Laughing at Animals”; Hearne, “The Sound of Kindness”; Cortazar, “Axolotl” (short story); Kuzniar, “Intimacy with Dogs”; screening of Gregory Colbert YouTube videos.

Paper 6: Do a two-page observation of an animal, in any genre. The animal should be a sentient material being in the world.

Th 5/15 Fabre, “Cicada,” “The Grub-Worm,” “The Common Wasp,” “The Capricorn” (you may also buy and use Fabre’s Book of Insects, which is recommended for the course); Raffles, “A is for Air”; Callois, “Mimicry and Psychasthenia” (hard); REC: Raffles, “E is for Evolution” (long but excellent; about Fabre); Kohn, “How Dogs Dream”; Masson & McCarthy, “Grief, Sadness, and the Bones of Elephants” in AR

Week VIII: Encounters
T 5/20  Despret, “The Body We Care For”; Rothels, “Immersed with Animals”; Birke, “Who-or-What is the Laboratory Rat”; High, “Playing with Rats”; LeGuin, “Mazes” (short story); if time: screening of Rat (Mark Lewis)

Paper 7: Do a 3-5 page piece of “nature writing”; or write about an interaction with sentient beings in nature or in culture or in nature/culture. You can, if you wish, elaborate and extend upon your animal observation paper from the week before.
 
Th 5/22 Screening of Babe; McHugh, “Bringing Up Babe” (way long but fun, hard); R.O. Butler, “Help me find my Spaceman Lover” (short story); REC: Anzaldua, “Interface” (short story); Cartmill, “The Bambi Syndrome (long, interesting)

Week IX: Current Events/Encounters
T 5/27  Rose, “What if the Angel of History were a Dog?”; New Yorker essay, “Neptune’s Way”; Pollan, “Power Steer”; Siebert, “Elephant Crack-Up?”; Rice, “A Dying Breed”; If time: screening of Errol Morris, First Person: Stairway to Heaven (Temple Grandin)

Paper 9: Animals in popular culture. Discuss an example of the use/representation/appearance of an animals or animals in popular culture (2 pages)

Th 5/29 Derrida and Roudinesco, “Violence Against Animals”; Haraway, “Chicken”; Hearne, “What’s Wrong with Animal Rights?”; REC: Corrigan, “Letter to City Council”
If time: screening of Behind the Mask (or YouTube equivalent); and Mark Lewis, The Natural History of the Chicken

Week X: Science and Sentience
T 6/3 Thompson Cussins, “Confessions of a Bio-Terrorist” (hard); Franklin, “Sex” (from Dolly Mixtures); McHugh, “Bitches from Brazil” (long); begin The Companion Species Manifesto (to p. 54); REC: Hearne, “Rough Magics”

Paper 10: Find a current event story having to do with science in a magazine or newspaper and report on it (2 pages). Please include the article stapled to your paper

Th 6/5 Finish The Companion Species Manifesto; Haraway, “Foreword”; Kak, “GFP Bunny”; REC: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? (Best and Nocella, “Behind the Mask” [long]; Jones, “Mothers with Monkeywrenches”)

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