Course Details

Course offered Winter 2013

Honors 394 B: Animal Planet: Food, Development and Activism in Global Perspective (A&H / SSc)

Honors 394 B: Animal Planet: Food, Development and Activism in Global Perspective (A&H / SSc)

SLN 14744 (View UW registration info »)

Maria Elena Garcia (Comparative History of Ideas; Anthropology; American Indian Studies; Geography; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies)
Office: B102 Padelford Hall, Box 354300
Phone: 206 221-0561
Email: meg71@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 20 students

Recent years have seen an increase in interest about food politics: how it is produced, where it comes from, how it intersects with class and racial inequality, childhood obesity, and climate change among many other issues. Yet recent scholarship on and activism around food very often ignores the centrality of non-human animals. This course will focus on the place of animals in transnational economies of food and development programs. We will also explore the global movement for animal rights and welfare, and challenge the notion that concern over the plight of “food” (and other) animals is limited to the “developed” world.

Course Requirements and Assignments

– Active participation during seminar and weekly reading responses
– Weblog Assignment (to be included in Honors Portfolio)
– Collaborative report and presentation on industrial agriculture in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, or India
– Short position paper on animal-related policy issue