3 credit hours
Animals: We delight in their companionship; ride, hunt, eat and watch them; entertain ourselves with them; empathize with their suffering; use them to satisfy our vanity; hoard them; experiment on them; dress them and even eulogize them. Animals are simultaneously ubiquitous and hidden from our view. Our lives intersect with the lives of animals every day, yet our relationships with them remain a paradox. In this course, students will study contemporary issues about how our lives intersect with the lives of animals globally. In their quest to become liberally educated individuals, students will develop necessary intellectual and scholarly skills of close reading, cogent writing, thoughtful thinking and debating respectfully with others who disagree with them.