Multispecies Anthropology: Encounters Between the Human and The Non-Human

4 credits · Undergraduate

This is a class about the relations between human and non-human animals. It reflects on the intimate, productive, ethical, and destructive terms by which people and animals encounter each other. We live with animals, we eat them, we love them, we wear them. As humans have domesticated animals, so animals have domesticated us. Human culture recognizes its forms of communication, selfhood, power relations, labor processes, religious beliefs, and economic exchanges as including animals. Animals engage in productive roles alongside humans - they hunt, work the fields, pull sledges, carry loads, entertain, go to war, guide, protect, and attack. They are beloved companions and members of our families.