Module ENGL2721: Animal Stories after Darwin

Department: English Studies

ENGL2721: Animal Stories after Darwin

Prerequisites

• •Any Single or Joint Honours finalist student wishing to take this Special Topic must have satisfactorily completed the required number of core modules. Combined Honours and Outside Honours students must have satisfactorily completed either two Level 1 core introductory modules, or at least one Level 1 core module and one further lecture based module in English at Level 2

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To explore how post-Darwinian narratives presented in a variety of media, including film, graphic narratives, and literature in print, depict the experiences of nonhuman animals--in ways that can lead to a reassessment of the relationships among human and nonhuman worlds.
• To introduce students to the cross-disciplinary field of critical animal studies, which reconsiders assumptions about the primacy of the human--and also institutions and practices based on such assumptions.
• To use animal stories as a means for bringing the study of literature into dialogue with developments in the sciences, including the life sciences (e.g., evolutionary biology, ecology, and ethology), the cognitive sciences (e.g., ecological psychology, models of embodied cognition), and the social sciences (e.g., sociological approaches to human-animal relationships).
• To underscore the relevance of literature as means for engaging with broader issues related to the environment, including conservation, biodiversity, and anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems.

Content

• Focuses on narratives in several media that, following in the wake of Darwin, engage with questions concerning the nature, experiences, and status of nonhuman animals.
• Addresses major writers of the period, including Anna Sewell, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, J.M. Coetzee, and others.
• Relates these writers' animal narratives to discussions of animals by contemporaneous theorists such as Darwin, Freud, Uexküll, and others.
• Examines different literary genres (novels, short fiction, nonfiction) and media (print texts, graphic narratives, cinema) and encourages close textual analysis of narrative strategies used to engage with nonhuman animals in all of these genres and media.
• Explores areas of intersection among literature, philosophy, and science in relation to questions about nonhuman animals.
• Combines close reading of individual texts with a wider investigation of issues raised by narrative engagements with nonhuman beings, their relations to humans, and their situation within larger ecosystems.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain extensive knowledge and understanding of post-Darwinian animal narratives and the techniques used by their authors to evoke the experiences of nonhuman beings.
• Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of critical animal studies and other critical frameworks for studying narratives that feature nonhuman agents.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literary and other narratives and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literary and other narratives
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of fictional and nonfictional narrative as a mode of expression through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• skills of effective communication and argument
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology.
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work.
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar; informal position papers encourage students to advance claims and refine them in the light of seminar discussion.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first essay, students will have an individual consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University