{"id":25824,"date":"2023-05-24T15:16:06","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T19:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=25824"},"modified":"2023-05-25T14:30:05","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T18:30:05","slug":"mayx-animal-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/mayx-animal-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"MayX Snapshot: How animals \u2013 human and otherwise \u2013 shape society"},"content":{"rendered":"

May Experience 2023<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Course:<\/h4>\n

Animals, Culture and Society<\/em><\/p>\n

Instructor:<\/h4>\n

Benjamin Haywood, associate director of the Faculty Development Center<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Description:<\/h4>\n

An introduction to animal studies, the emerging interdisciplinary field devoted to the recognition and reexamination of the place of non-human animals in human life.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The topic was polarizing, but the students in the MayX<\/a> class Animals, Culture and Society were determined to be diplomatic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to word this in a way that doesn\u2019t insult the dog people,\u201d said Colin Clinton \u201924.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all right,\u201d said the instructor, Benjamin Haywood. \u201cWe\u2019re all friends here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a certain fortitude to domesticate a cat,\u201d continued Clinton. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to associate with something that doesn\u2019t necessarily want to associate with you. You\u2019ve got to come to a mutual understanding. Whereas you tell a dog to jump, and it says, \u2018How high?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The differences between cats and dogs \u2013 and the ways in which humans relate to both \u2013 is one lens through which the class explored a relatively new academic discipline. Animal studies, also known as anthrozoology or human-animal studies, is an interdisciplinary field that overlaps with biology, geology, anthropology, art history, communications, philosophy and sociology, among others. Interest has grown over the last few decades, with university programs and research journals continuing to emerge.<\/p>\n

Coexistence and conflict<\/h3>\n

For Haywood, the central question is, \u201cWhere and how do non-human animals intersect with human lives?\u201d<\/p>\n

The course sampled just a few of the many contemporary social conflicts that surround that central question. Through in-class discussions of research and popular press articles, videos and reports, the students examined the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and psychological research, the conflicts between feral and domesticated cats and wild birds, and the Puritan tiger beetle<\/a>, which has pitted conservationists against homeowners and developers in the Chesapeake Bay.<\/p>\n

The MayX class is similar to one Haywood co-taught as an assistant professor of environmental science and sustainability at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want students to question their assumptions about their relationship with non-human animals,\u201d Haywood said, \u201cand how that influences the way we treat and behave with members of our own and other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethical implications<\/h3>\n

The question of how animals helped shape human society is what drew Clinton to this MayX course.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a history major<\/a>, it\u2019s important not only to understand the chronicle of events, but also to catalog the evolution and growth of humans and the cultural traits that have manifested in humans over time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve talked about a number of interesting ethical conundrums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaitlyn Wills \u201924 found the course fits in well with her psychology<\/a> major as well as the classes she\u2019s taken in sociology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we think about animals tells us a lot about the way we think in general,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve never thought about how similar humans are to other animals. Their lives are probably as important as ours, but we never really respect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The course will have one lasting takeaway for Wills, who plans to study evolutionary psychology in graduate school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be more mindful going forward,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll have less of a human ego.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A May Experience course introduces students to an emerging academic field studying how we relate to animals \u2013 and what that tells us about ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":25850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,54,48,22,61,30],"tags":[2104],"class_list":["post-25824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-may-experience","category-psychology","category-sociology","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories","tag-mayx-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}