Time Schedule:
Maria E Garcia
CHID 480
Seattle Campus
Examines a different subject or problem from a comparative framework with an interdisciplinary perspective. Offered: AWSp.
Class description
SUFFERING: ANIMALS, VIOLENCE, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SILENCE This advanced seminar invites students to engage intellectually with the idea and experiences of suffering. How do we think about suffering and, perhaps more importantly, how do we not think about it? Reviewing philosophical, cultural, and social questions about the nature of pain and violence, this course pays special attention to the suffering of non-human animals.In the United States, approximately 56 billion animals are killed each year in the food industry alone, although this does not include fish or other sea animals. Throughout the world, millions of animals are used in illegal fighting and trafficking circles, used in medical experiments, and killed in harrowing ways for their fur and skin. The pain and suffering that these and other animals endure in life, and during the process of death, is mostly hidden from public view. Do we consider the fate of pigs, chinchillas, or mice, in the same way that we think about the dogs or cats with whom we share a home? How do humans make decisions about the relative importance (and non-importance) of the suffering of particular animals? What are the consequences of those decisions?
In addition to considering these questions, this course also explores the ways in which some forms of violence become more and less visible. What kind of cultural work goes into the production and understanding of these multiple forms of violence? More hopefully, what can be(and has been) done to address these forms of violence in the world? Besides reading philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and other scholars, students will also engage visual materials (especially documentary films) in order to explore what Kathie Jenni calls the “power of the visual.� Is witnessing suffering a necessary part of confronting and mitigating it? This course will also take at least two field trips (to a farm animal sanctuary and a local animal shelter) to get a closer look into the ways in which human and non-human emotions intertwine. Together we will explore the learning that is produced from interrogating the gaps and connections between our emotional responses and our ethical commitments.
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