CI1908W

This course looks at animal tales as reflecting the never-entirely-suppressed memory of our kinship with animals and offering a hope for the future. The theoretical lens adopted in this course is environmental ethics: you’ll be challenged to reflect about what it means to be a person and/or an animal, and you’ll learn to see various genres of animal tales, historic and contemporary, as reflecting the multifaceted evolution of environmental ethics. We’ll explore the benefits of reaching out and learning from the “Other” long excluded from conversation: animals, the natural world, and children. Starting from ancient myths and beast fables, through folk and fairy tales, and on to modern novels and films and games, we’ll study stories about talking animals, animal guides, and animal companions as reflecting the complex ethical and culturally-situated conceptualizations of the human relationship with the natural world. We’ll trace the changing perception of animals in these narratives and explore the deep human need for animal companionship. We’ll explore why young children talk to animals and to the world around them. Linking the child and the animal, we’ll seek answers to why the bulk of animal stories today can be found in children’s literature. We’ll learn about anthropomorphism, totemism, animism, speciesism, environmentalism, empathic understanding and the cognitive-affective role of storytelling. Our readings will include global and multicultural narratives in the genres of fantasy, myth, folktale, fairy tale, and realistic fiction. You’ll work individually and in groups on written and oral assignments that will demonstrate your growing understanding of the role of animal tales in the past and the present—both in the context of child’s cognitive-affective development and in the context of humanity’s accelerating assault on the biosphere.

About the instructor:
Catherine Cavanaugh is a Lecturer in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction within the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Prior to receiving her PhD from Fordham University, she was an elementary educator.

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Civic Life and Ethics

Every Fall & Spring