Reading Animals: Animals in American Literature and Theory 3301-LA2228

The perspective of animal studies – often associated with posthumanism, ecocriticism and environment al humanities – is increasingly gaining recognition in contemporary literary theory. This perspective makes is possible to both re-read canonical literary oeuvres and to conceptualize the change that can currently be observed in contemporary literature, that is the foregrounding of the human-animal relationship, often in the context of basic ethical questions. The goal of the course is to develop the students’ interest in the new critical perspective of animal studies and to provide them with the tools required to use this perspective in order to critically read works of American literature. The course opens with a theoretical introduction that contextualizes the increased interest in animals in lilterature and culture as part of the larger turns in critical theory, mostly the interest in the relationship of ethics and literature, the affective turn and the counterlinguistic turn (Derrida 2002, Wolfe 2003, Weil 2012).

Next, using theoretical texts (Glenney Boggs 2012) and historical sources (Anderson 2004), the students analyze the role of animals and the concept of animality as foundational for the shaping of early American identity. Students re-read canonical literary texts (or their fragments) with emphasis on the human-animal dynamics, the notion of animality and the needs for breaking away from animality discernable particularly in the writings of ethnic minorities.

Representations of animals in sentimental fiction and the use of these ‘sentimental animals’ for the purposes of achieving social change constitute the next general theme of analysis. The feminization of the companion animal (Mason 2005), the use of animal imagery and animal-related comparisons in social campaigns from abolitionism to antivivisectionism are also a topic of analysis.

American naturalism, fascinated with the concept of wildness, presents the human-animal relationship in a completely different light than sentimentalism, one which cannot be fully understood without recourse to changes in gender roles at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (Shukin 2012).
Even though modernist literature is usually disinterested in deep psychological portraits of animals, assuming the animal studies perspective makes it possible to read certain canonical texts of modernism (for example Hemingway’s short stories about hunting) in a new light (Armstrong 2008, Wolfe 2003).
In contemporary literature, reflection on the human-animal bond – that is, both a bond between an individual human and a specific animal serving as a springboard for broader refection (e.g. Mark Doty) but also a more abstract postanthropocentric reflection about the place of humans in a non-fully human world – often becomes the primary theme of literary works. In this segment of the course, students analyze the formal strategies used by contemporary authors to enable such reflection, contrasting them with strategies used in the past.