Speaking Animals: Literature and Interspecies Relations
| Module title | Speaking Animals: Literature and Interspecies Relations |
|---|---|
| Module code | EAS3411 |
| Academic year | 2019/0 |
| Credits | 30 |
| Module staff | Jane Spencer (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 11 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 15 |
|---|
Module description
This module explores the central role of non-human animals in literature, assessing the way human identity is constructed through its difference from animality, how animals are figuratively used to represent human characteristics and concerns, and how the place of animals in human culture is debated. We will begin with ancient texts by Aesop, Ovid and Apuleius before examining animals from Shakespeare to the 21st century. Our investigations will be built around animal species of key cultural significance: the donkey, the horse, the great apes, the nightingale, the dog and the tiger. Through them we will consider literature’s imaginative response to animals as beasts of burden, as close relations, as poetic voices, as companions, and as avatars of the wild.
Module aims - intentions of the module
- The module invites you to consider the ways the linguistic art of literature makes non-human animals speak, and to think about the purposes and effect of such speech. It will encourage you to analyse a wide range of texts – fable, drama, poetry and novels – to investigate their representation of the relation between animal and human, and to consider what it is that non-human animal figures allow writers to express.
- It will introduce you to the rich cultural histories of particular animal species.
- You will develop an understanding of how the debate about non-human animals’ status, capacities, significance, and rights has developed in different historical periods, and will consider the ethics of our relationship with non-human animals.
- You will engage critically with the emergent field of animal studies and the related field of ecocriticism, and consider the challenges they pose to traditional understandings of human-animal relations.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of the literary uses made of animals in selected ancient texts and in Anglophone literature from the 16th century to the present day
- 2. Demonstrate an informed understanding of the major ways in which animals and human-animal relationships are conceptualised within Western thought
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 3. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse the literature of different periods and relate its concerns and modes of expression to its cultural, historical and philosophical contexts
- 4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts specific to your own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 5. Through seminar work and group presentations, demonstrate communication skills, and an ability to work critically and imaginatively both individually and in groups
- 6. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
- 7. Through research for seminars, presentations and essays, demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
- 8. Through research, seminar discussion, preparation for presentations and essay writing demonstrate a capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to reflect critically on their own learning process
Syllabus plan
Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:
We will begin our study by considering how, when and why animals speak, using selected philosophy and theory as well as Aesop’s Fables. During the early weeks of the module we will consider animal transformations in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Moving from donkeys to horses, we will consider the rise of the animal welfare movement in relation to Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. The relation between ape and human will be considered with reference to Kafka’s short story A Report for an Academy, and a response to Kafka in Ceridwen Dovey’s recent collection, Only the Animals. We will make a foray into the discussion of sibling relationships through Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. We will consider the relationship between poetry, poetic voice and animality through a reading of selected poems concerning the nightingale.
Our later seminars will focus on both on the wildness of animals, from the tiger in Martel’s Life of Pi to the wild call of wolf-nature heard by the dog in Jack London’s Call of the Wild, and on human relationships with companion animals, exemplified in the dog-love differently represented in Call of the Wild, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems to her pet dog, and Virginia Woolf’s playful animal biography, Flush. Throughout, we will weave discussion of relevant works of animal philosophy and theory together with our close reading of literary animals. During the module there will be a field trip to the Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, where we will learn about the charity’s work and have the chance to enjoy some hands-on interspecies communication with one of the module’s central animals.
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 33 | 267 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled learning and teaching | 11 | Workshops |
| Scheduled learning and teaching | 22 | Seminars |
| Guided independent study | 70 | Seminar preparation (group) |
| Guided independent study | 197 | Reading, research and assessment preparation |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group presentation | 25 | 20 minutes | 1-5, 7-8 | Oral feedback by tutor in seminar supplemented by feedback sheet |
| Essay | 25 | 1500 words | 1-4, 6-8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
| Essay | 50 | 3000 words | 1-5, 7-8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group presentation | Essay (1500 words) | 1-4, 6-8 | Referral/Deferral period |
| Essay (1500 words) | Essay (1500 words) | 1-4, 6-8 | Referral/Deferral period |
| Essay (3000 words) | Essay (3000 words) | 1-4, 6-8 | Referral/Deferral period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Primary Texts:
- Aesop, Fables (World’s Classics)
- Ovid, Metamorphoses
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass (World’s Classics)
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
- Franz Kafka, A Report for an Academy
- Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Animals
- Jack London, The Call of the Wild
- Virginia Woolf, Flush
- Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Selected Secondary Texts:
- Armstrong, Philip, What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (Routledge 2008)
- Brown, Laura, Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes (Cornell 2010)
- Haraway, Donna J When Species Meet (Minnesota 2007)
- McHugh, Susan, Animal Stories: Narrating Across Species Lines (Minnesota 2011)
- Payne, Mark, The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination (OUP 2010)
- Rohman, Carrie, Stalking the Subject: Modernism and the Animal (Columbia 2009)
- Ryan, Derek, Animal Theory: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh 2015)
- Wolfe, Cary, ed, Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minnesota 2003)
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
| Credit value | 30 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | None |
| Module co-requisites | None |
| NQF level (module) | 6 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 2016 |
| Last revision date | 08/07/2019 |