7/9/13

Animal Rights Reading List

I've been blogging more about animal issues lately, though these days I'm mostly focused on working on my book (er, manuscript until it has a publisher) about parenthood.  One reason why: because I'm gearing up to teach my course on animal rights again in the fall.  The course is cross-listed as both an upper-level philosophy course and a "cultural formations" class, which means (basically) it's supposed to be interdisciplinary. This year's books are (in case anyone's interested):

Jean Kazez, Animalkind: What We Owe to Animals
I'm using this for its survey content, not so much to turn students into Kazezians.
 Victoria Braithwaite, Do Fish Feel Pain?
 Nice way to delve deeply into questions about animal minds.
 Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, Zoopolis
Super interesting book. Should dogs become citizens?  What is a citizen?  Looking forward to discussing this and a multitude of other good questions raised by the book.
Michael Faber, Under the Skin
This excellent novel could be read as an argument against human meat-consumption, but is the argument any good? Coming this year: the movie version starring Scarlett Johansson.  If there is a god in heaven, it will come out on time for class discussion.
Susan Armstrong and Richard Botzler, The Animal Ethics Reader
There's lots to choose from in here, and the collection is pleasingly interdisciplinary.  (Negatives:  The font his terrifyingly small. Even my youthful students complain.  The articles are excessively edited.  No, not another elipsis!)

4 comments:

Daniel Hooley said...

Great reading list! I hadn't heard of the novel Under the Skin, but I look forward to reading it.

Spencer said...

I love looking at new reading lists! I'll be sure to check out that novel at the library - hope they have it.

Matthew Pianalto said...

Nice reading list. You've nicely pointed out the problems with the Animal Ethics Reader (the font and the excessive editing). Otherwise it's a nice collection. Still, I've been hoping to see a competitor anthology emerge, and I can't quite convince myself to try my own hand at editing a reader...

Jean Kazez said...

Yes, I really don't see a good competitor. Some anthologies are out of date, some too law-focused. I'd love to see a third edition of this one with some improvements.