Course Description

Our society’s relationship with animals is rapidly changing: courts are considering giving chimpanzees personhood, more than 200 U.S. cities and counties have banned the sale of dogs from puppy mills, and Silicon Valley has gone bananas for “clean meat,” real meat grown from animal cells rather than confined cows and chickens.

In this course, we’ll dive into animal rights literature and film to learn about the myriad ways we humans abuse animals (not for the faint of heart), but also how we’re learning to be a little more humane toward other species with which we inhabit this planet.

Nonfiction Books

Essays and Articles

Film

Photography

We Animals by Jo-Anne McArthur

Documentary

Kenny Torrella has worked in the animal rights movement for nearly a decade in various roles: outreach, state legislation, institutional policy, and communications. His writing has appeared in Fortune Magazine, Juked, The Rumpus, Word Riot, NAILED, Rain Taxi, Conscious Company, Oblong, and elsewhere.

Featured Image: Film still from Okja, dir. Bong Joon-ho