WINNIPEG, MB – Trophy hunting. Cecil. These three words invoke a global outrage over the brutal killing of a lion in Zimbabwe by an American dentist that is historically unprecedented, and evidence that our morality is changing to accommodate compassion for animals.
The University of Winnipeg is offering a Fall Institute entitled “Humanity, Animality, Secularity,” featuring weekly guest speakers, including reserved access to a keynote lecture on campus by renowned primatologist and animal rights activist, Dr. Jane Goodall.
Spaces are still available for UWinnipeg students to take the course organized by CLASS which begins September 10 and runs to November 26, on Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30 to 3:45 pm.
This lively, interdisciplinary seminar will explore the role of animals in the Western moral imagination. This course considers the different ways in which Western humanism, ethics, and secular society have failed to come to grips with the place and status of animals in our world. It begins by examining how the moral status of animals has been understood in Western thought and the arguments used to uphold the human-animal distinction, including the idea that the power of speech, communication, and reason confers a special status upon humanity. It will also examine how moral rhetoric and discourse overwhelmingly focus on people to the exclusion of animals and the planet. Students will engage in a wide range of writings addressing “the question of the animal,” including from an Indigenous perspective.
Register for the course here.
For more information on the Fall Institute “Humanity, Animality, Secularity” contact:
Dr. Jason Hannan, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Rhetoric and Communication
Tel: 204.786.9453
Email: j.hannan@uwinnipeg.ca
Email: jasonhannan@hotmail.com
While at the UWinnipeg campus, Dr. Goodall will deliver an evening public lecture on September 11.
MEDIA CONTACT
Diane Poulin, Senior Communications Specialist, The University of Winnipeg
P: 204.988.7135, E: d.poulin@uwinnipeg.ca
