ML3212 Humans and Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction and Thought

2018-9 Term 1

Convenor: Dr Danielle Sands


Assessment


Formative piece (0%)

Essay 1: 30%, 2000-2500 words

Essay 2: 70% 2500-3000 words

Overview  

In this course, we will examine representations of human and animal life in twenty-first century fiction and thought. We will consider the ways in which the human-animal relation informs ideas of human identity, and explore the different literary techniques employed to represent animal life. We will ask questions such as: what does it mean to be human? What is the difference between animals and humans? And how can we understand and represent animal experience?

The course will be divided into five key topics:

            Animal companions

            Representing animals

            Anthropomorphism and the limits of the human

            Life, matter and agency

            Posthumanism and metamorphosis

Each topic will comprise a novel and a short theoretical text drawn from a range of cultural, theoretical and geographical backgrounds. We will identify the literary and theoretical questions arising from these texts and critically and comparatively evaluate the different approaches to the human-animal relation.

Texts
The set novels for 2017-8 are:

            Jose Saramago, The Elephant’s Journey (2008)

            Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil (2010)

            Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013)

            Jim Crace, Being Dead (1999)

            Han Kang, The Vegetarian (2015)

Theoretical texts will be drawn from authors including, but not limited to:

Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, N. Katherine Hayles, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Frans de Waal and Cary Wolfe.