Courses

This course examines how humans and animals shape each other’s lives, using the tools and perspectives of anthropology. We’ll explore the astounding diversity of human-animal relationships in time and space, tracing the ways animals have made their impact on human societies (and vice-versa). Using contemporary ethnographic, historical, and archaeological examples from a variety of geographical regions and chronological periods, this class will consider how humans and animals live and work together, and the ways in which humans have found animals “good to think with”.  In this course, we will also discuss how knowledge about human-animal relationships in the past might change contemporary and future approaches to living with animals. Through the reading and thinking that this course requires, you will explore what an anthropological perspective on living with animals looks like and how thinking about animals might change anthropology.