“Uncommon Courses” is an irregular series from The Conversation US that presents unconventional teaching approaches.
Course title:
How did the thought for the course come about?
A couple of years ago I got here across the bogus Habitat for bats at Griffis Sculpture Park in upstate New York. This outdoor installation, titled “Bat Tower,” was designed as a house for the little brown bat, an endangered species threatened by a fungal infection called white-nose syndrome.
By incorporating “landing pads,” “bat ladders,” and other elements that accommodate bats' needs, Hwang has not only brought the plight of those animals to the general public's attention, but has also inspired deeper considered how humans make—or, more often, fail to make—space for nonhumans. That's the query I desired to explore in Space/Power/Species.
What does the course examine?
This course in cultural anthropology examines how architecture shapes relationships between humans and animals. We explore the varied effects of buildings on animals, humans, and their interactions.
I start with the spikes We will examine the traps that architects placed on buildings to stop pigeons, seagulls and other birds from nesting, and discuss the violence of the methods used to discourage animals. Then we’ll have a look at traps, shackles and enclosures – what some anthropologists Architectures of domestication.
Our approach is historical and comparative. We cover Dovecotes – Pigeon houses – in ancient Iran and industrial pig farms within the United States. In certainly one of my favorite lessons, we visit the Penn Museum in Philadelphia to look at artifacts from its collection, including fishing nets and chicken coops.
The animals we discuss vary depending on the scholars' interests. When I first taught this course as a postdoctoral fellow on the University of Pennsylvania in spring 2023, we covered parakeets, mosquitoes, dogs, reindeer, oysters, corals, bats, coyotes, rats, and snails.
What materials does the course contain?
In the primary half of this hybrid seminar-studio, students conduct fieldwork throughout the town, bringing notes, photographs, recordings, and other documentary media from places where people encounter animals, including dog parks, botanical gardens, animal shelters, and vacant lots.
In class we discuss how the fabric features of those sites reflect and reinforce people’s relationship with these animals, whether as Accompanying species or as verminWe pay close attention to how these spaces concentrate on the human body and its interests.
To understand the scholars’ results, we read scholarship in animal experiments on urban wildlife, Animal perception and legal frameworks that transcend human, or Justice for multiple species.
In the second half of the course, students translate their fieldwork into representations of imagined architectures that might be more hospitable to animals. Guest critics from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, history, and anthropology evaluate their work. As students refine their projects, we analyze exemplary cases of animal-centered architecture, from designers to “Pet Architecture”, such as dog kennels and aquariums, to case studies by the architect Ned Dodington and the landscape architects Ariane Lourie Harrison And Kate Orff.
At the tip of the semester, the scholars and I organize a one-day pop-up Exhibition of all their “design ethnography” projects. They show every part from ceramic models and virtual reality simulations to tabletop role-playing games and performance art.
What is a crucial lesson from the course?
One of my students gave a superb answer to this query in an interview for Penn's alumni magazine. “We tend to have a very anthropocentric view of the world and our place in it,” she reflected, however the strategy of designing for animals ultimately helped her “see ourselves as living beings in the environment.”
Why is that this course relevant now?
People tend to think about cities as places wealthy in human culture but poor in wildlife. In a way, that's not mistaken. Urbanization can and does negatively impact certain species. But cities are also home to many other species. Some are there due to climate change and other types of habitat destruction. Others, like domesticated animals, are there because we forced them there. Livestock, for instance, make 62% of the world’s mammal biomass.
Countless other animals migrate to urban areas because they actually thriveor not less than survive there. Recognizing how animals inhabit our cities is step one to reducing the harm these spaces cause to animals, comparable to the danger that architectural glass poses to birds.
What does the course prepare students for?
My dream was that this mixture of teaching methods from anthropology and architecture would empower students to grapple with biodiversity loss, climate change, and other ecological crises. I had hoped that the creative spirit and pragmatic attitude of design would combat the nihilism that usually accompanies these issues when viewed only from the angle of the social sciences. I address this point in my article within the journal Teaching and Learning Anthropology.
I consider the primary iteration of the course a hit. Since the tip of the course, several students have told me that they are actually pursuing design projects that concentrate on animals.
image credit : theconversation.com