HIST5506D Special Topics in Comparative History: Human-Animal Relationship in History

This course examines the changing cultural and social positions of animals in the human world from ancient to present times. Adopting cross-cultural and comparative approaches, this course investigates the various and changing roles of animals in the long course of human history as totems, food, working companions, pets, etc. The changing human-animal relationship is a useful lens to understand not only the important role animals have played in human society, but also the changes in the ethical values of the humanity over time.

Learning Outcomes:

Students will be able to 

1. identify the various forces and factors that have shaped the human-animal relationship in different periods of time.
2. analyze current controversial animal issues with a historical and comparative perspective.
3. synthesize primary, secondary, written, and visual sources to make informed interpretations of historical and current issues about animals.

1. Introduction: Background and Issues

2. From Hunting to Domestication of Animals

3. Animals in Asian Traditions

4. Animals in Western Traditions
   

5. Animal Food Taboos

6. The Age of Reason and the Modern Zoo

7. Animals, Science, and Epidemics

8. Pet-keeping Culture and the Rise of the Middle Class

9. Animals in the Age of Imperialism

10. The Emergence of Animal Protection Movements in the 19^th Century

11. Politics of Animal Protection in the 20^th Century

12. Animals as National Symbols

13. Conclusion: “Why Look at Animals”

• Animals, Science, and Epidemics (Mar. 3)
• Pet-keeping Culture and the Rise of the Middle Class (Mar. 10)
• Politics of Animal Protection in the 20^th Century (Mar. 17)
• Animals as National Symbols (Mar. 24)

1. Introduction: Background and Issues

• Franklin, Adrian. “Good to Think with”: Theories of Human-animal Relations in Modernity.” A Sociology of Human-animal Relations in Modernity (London: Sage Publication, 1990), pp. 9-33.
• Sterckx, Roel & Martina Siebert Dagmar Schafer. “Knowing Animals in China’s History: An Introduction.” In Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert & Dagmar Schafer eds., Animals Through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1-19.

2. From Hunting to Domestication of Animals

• Bulliet, Richard W. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 71-100.
• Diamond, Jared. “The Anna Karenina Principle: Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?” In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (London: Vintage, 1998), pp. 157-175.

3. Animals in Asian Traditions

• Kemmerer, Lisa. Animals and World Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 4-18.
• Liu, Chungshee Hsien. “The Dog-Ancestor Story of the Aboriginal Tribes of Southern China.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 62 (Jul. – Dec. 1932), pp. 361-368.

4. Animals in Western Traditions

• Kemmerer, Lisa. Animals and World Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 206-240.
• Demello, Margo. Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), ch. 15, “Animals in Religion and Folklore,” pp. 301-324.

5. Animal Food Taboos

• Goossaert, Vincent. “The Beef Taboo and the Sacrificial Structure of Late Imperial Chinese Society.” In Roel Sterckx ed, Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 237-248.
• Harris, Marvin. “Mother Cow.” In Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1975), pp. 11–32.

6. The Age of Reason and the Modern Zoo

• Cowie, Helen. Exhibiting Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Empathy, Education, Entertainment (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 52-76, 101-125.
• Seeley, Joseph and Aaron Skabelund. “Bite, Bite against the Iron Cage”: The Ambivalent Dreamscape of Zoos in Colonial Seoul and Taipei.” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 79, No. 2 (May 2020): 429–454.

7. Animals, Science, and Epidemics

• McNeur, Catherine. Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2014), Chapter 1, “Mad Dogs and Loose Hogs.” pp. 6-44.
• Walker, Brett L. “Meiji Modernization, Scientific Agriculture, and the Destruction of Japan’s Hokkaido Wolf.” Environmental History, 2004, Vol. 9 (2), pp. 248-274.

8. Pet-keeping Culture and the Rise of the Middle Class

• Ritvo, Harriet. “The Emergence of Modern Pet-keeping.” In Flynn, Clifton P. ed. Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader (New York: Lantern Books, 2008), pp. 96-106.
• Serpell, James A. “Pet-Keeping in Non-Western Societies: Some Popular Misconceptions.” Anthrozoös, 1:3 (1987), pp. 166-174.

9. Animals in the Age of Imperialism

• Mackenzie, John. “Imperial Hunt in India.” The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 167-199.
• Sramek, Joseph. ‘“Face Him Like a Briton”: Tiger Hunting, Imperialism, and British Masculinity in Colonial India, 1800-1875.’ Victorian Studies, vol. 48, no. 4 (2006), pp. 659-680.

10. The Emergence of Animal Protection Movements in the 19^th Century

• Harrison, Brian. “Animals and the State in Nineteenth-Century England.” The English Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 349 (Oct. 1973), pp. 786-820.
• Kete, Kathleen. “Animals and Ideology: The Politics of Animal Protection in Europe.” In Rothfels Nigel ed., Representing Animals (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 19-34.

11. Politics of Animal Protection in the 20^th Century

• Hirata, Keiko. “Beached Whales: Examining Japan’s Rejection of an International Norm,” Social Science Japan Journal, 7 (2004): 177–97.
• Kolmas, Michal. “Why is Japan Shamed for Whaling More Than Norway? International Society and its Barbaric Others.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Volume 22, Issue 2 (May 2022): 267–296.

12. Animals as National Symbols

• Skabelund, Aaron Herald. “The ‘Loyal Dog’ Hachiko and the Creation of the “Japanese” Dog.” Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), pp. 87-129.
• Songster, Elena. Panda Nation: The Construction and Conservation of China’s Modern Icon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 82-101.

13. Conclusion: “Why Look at Animals”

• Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals.” In About Looking (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 1-28.
  

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