Animals & Society

Catalog description

This course is a foundational course for students enrolling in the Animal Welfare Certificate Program. It will describe the changing roles and status of animals in society, and examine the history of human-animal relationships through the lens of subsistence hunting, animal domestication, farming and pastoralism, animal research, and pet keeping. The historical development of ambivalent/oppositional attitudes to animal exploitation will also be described and discussed, and the remarkable diversity of contemporary human-animal relationships and their impacts on animal welfare will be explored across cultures and contexts. The influence of science, government, business, and non-governmental organizations in defining and influencing animal-related laws and policies will also be addressed.