Sample Syllabus:
Topics in gender, sex, species difference
While women’s studies courses are often taught as interdisciplinary courses, sometimes
they lean more toward the humanities, other times toward the social sciences. Here we
present a range of materials to provide choices for either type of leaning. We have
organized our syllabus to begin with the problematic construction of women, animals,
people of color as essentialized “others”; followed by discussions of the particular ways
women and animals are objectified in social and cultural practices; and conclude with a
section on theoretical and practical ways to live with rather than against (animal) others
and our own (animal) otherness. We believe such an organization provides a foundation
for building a gender/animal studies course.
Section 1 Ain’t I an Animal?
Readings:
• Aristotle Politics, Book 1, Chapters 5 and 8 (also in Singer and Regan, pp. 4-5)
• Sherry Ortner “Is female to male as culture to nature?”
• Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror Ch. 1 and Ch. 3
• Elizabeth Bishop, “Pink Dog”
• Mary Midgley “The Concept of Beastliness: Philosophy, Ethics and Animal
Behavior”
• Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate, Chapter 1
• Erica Fudge: Animal, Introduction and Chapter II
• Carol Adams “War on Compassion” Ch. 1 in Feminist Care Tradition in Ethics
and “On Beastliness and a Politics of Solidarity” Ch. 4 in Neither Man nor Beast
• Ronnie Hawkins “Ecofeminism and nonhumans: Continuity, difference, dualism
and domination”
Section 2 Objectifying Others
Hunting and Eating
Readings:
• Marti Kheel “License to Kill: An Ecofeminist Critique of Hunters’ Discourse”
in Animals and Women
• Val Plumwood “On Being Prey”
• George Orwell “Shooting an Elephant”
• Ursula Leguin, “The Wife’s Story”
• Linda Kalof et. al. “Reading the Trophy: Exploring the Display of Dead
Animals in Hunting Magazines”
• Susan Griffin, “The Hunt” in Intimate Nature, pp. 209-212
• Kari Weil “Killing them Softly”
• Donna Haraway “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden”
Ch. 3 of Primate Visions
• Cathryn Bailey “We are What We Eat”
• Lori Gruen “Empathy and Feminist Vegetarian Commitments”
• Alice Walker “Am I Blue?”
• Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat
• Sue Coe, Dead Meat
Science and Sex
Readings:
• Carol Adams, “The Arrogant Eye of Animal Experimentation” Ch 2 in Neither
Man nor Beast.
• Lynda Birke, Feminism, animals and science: The naming of the shrew.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Cynthia Chris, “Animal Sex” Ch. 4 in Watching Wildlife.
• Carolyn Merchant. “Nature as Female, Ch. 1 in Death of Nature
• Catherine Russell, “Zoology, Pornography, Ethnography, Ch 6 in
Experimental Ethnography
• Lynda Birke et. al. “Animal Performances: An exploration of intersections
between feminist science studies and studies of human/animal relationships”
• Natalie Angier, “Bonobo Society: Amicable, Amorous, And Run by Females”
in Intimate Nature, 68-70.
• Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake
• J. M Coetzee Disgrace
Caged and Kept
Readings:
• Carol Adams, The Pornography of Meat, chap. 6
• Alice Munro “Girls and Boys”
• Franz Kafka “Report to an Academy”
• Marilyn Frye “Oppression” Ch. 1 in The Politics of Reality
• Virginia Woolf, Flush
• Susan Squire, Ch 6 in Virgina Wolf and London the Sexual Politics of the City
• Hélène Cixous, “Shared at Dawn”
• Kathleen Kete, “Domesticity and the Dog-Care Book” in The Beast in the
Boudoir.
• Paula Rego Dog Women
Part 3 Bridging Distance
Readings:
• Chris Cuomo and Lori Gruen: “On Puppies and Pussies: Animals, Intimacy,
and Moral Distance”
• Lynda Birke and Luciana Parisi “Animals, Becoming”
• Donna Haraway: Ch. 1-4 from When Species Meet
• Vicki Hearne: Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name
• Ursula LeGuin: stories from Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences
• Maria Lugones: “Playfulness, World-Traveling, and Loving Perception”
• Helene Cixous, “Birds, Women and Writing” in Animal Philosophy
• Luce Irigaray “Animal Compassion” in Animal Philosophy
Additional Reading:
Acampora, Ralph (2007) “Animal Philosophy” in Malamud, R. (ed.) A Cultural History
of Animals in the Modern Age. Oxford, New York: Berg.
Gaard, Greta (1993) “Living interconnections with animals and nature” In Gaard, G.
(Ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gruen, Lori (1990) “Gendered knowledge? Examining influences on scientific and
ethological inquiries” in Bekoff, M. & D. Jamieson (eds.) Interpretation and explanation
in the study of animal behavior. Boulder: Westview Press.
Gruen, Lori (1993) “Dismantling oppression: An analysis of the connection between
women and animals” in Gaard, G. (ed.) Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Haraway, Donna (1991) “Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the
privilege of partial perspective” in Haraway D. (ed.) Simians, cyborgs and women.
London: Free Association.
Kappeler, Susanne (1995) “Speciesism, racism, nationalism...or the power of scientific
subjectivity” in Adams, C.J. & J. Donovan (eds.) Animals and women: Feminist
theoretical explorations. Durham: Duke University Press.
Noske, Barbara (1989) Humans and other animals: beyond the boundaries of
anthropology. London: Pluto Press.
Plumwood, Val (2000) “Integrating Ethical Frameworks for Animals, Humans, and
Nature: A Critical Feminist Eco-Socialist Analysis” Ethics and the Environment, Vol.5,
No.2.
Weil, K. (1999) “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Thing With Horses in NineteenthCentury France” differences 11(1).