Cultural History of Falconry

Catalog description

The history of falconry is not a hunting story. It's a story of human imagination of self, society, and the natural world. Approaching falconry as a "social fact" and as an example of what specialists refer to as "intangible heritage," this course asks what human engagements with these birds of prey, across time and culture, reveal about relationships between humans and nature - relationships of ethics and respect, but also of desire and domination. How might a close examination of falconry help explain the emergence and transformation of social categories such as nobility and poverty, male and female, believer and pagan, citizen and foreigner? How might it require us to confront human fragility - our bodily, intellectual, and spiritual limits, our experiences of joy, love, youth, death, faith, science, and more? Engaging with texts, images, and films, students will ask how humans use non-human species to understand and define ourselves, our civilizations, and our aspirations across a range of ethnic, religious, historical, and geographical differences.