Healing Animals - Harvard University

Professor Laura Stark
321 Calhoun
615-343-0916
Healing Animals
MHS 290
Spring 2015
M/W 2:35 – 3:50
Buttrick 306
Office hours:
Tues. 12-1p & by apt
laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu
DESCRIPTION
Some animals are doctors’ best friends. Non-human animals are essential to modern medicine, and
play an indispensible role in therapeutics and in research. Animals are also patients in their own
right, and fuel veterinary/comparative medicine, as well as concerns about the health of animals as
friends, food, entertainment, and vectors of disease. Despite the centrality of animals in medicine,
the roles of some animals—and some activities—are often obscured or erased. Through
classroom discussion and outside assignments, students will consider the legal, economic, social
and emotional techniques people use to both celebrate and conceal the central place of animals in
modern medicine.
COURSE MATERIALS
There will be approximately 50 pages of reading per meeting, which should take students roughly
2.5 hours to complete. There are no required books to purchase for the course. Reading and
listening assignments will be available on OAK.
COURSE POLICIES
Students may use laptops in class with Professor Stark’s permission. Please email a request for
permission and schedule a meeting to discuss the possibility.
Students may audio or video record lectures for personal use after receiving written permission
from Professor Stark. Students who would like to record as part of a learning accommodation
should apply through Vanderbilt’s Disability Services Program. Professor Stark is happy to help
with the process: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ead/ds_students.html
It is mandatory to attend and participate in all class meetings. Excused absences will be accepted
with a message from a health clinic or from students’ class deans for illnesses, life events, and
observed holidays: http://as.vanderbilt.edu/docs/Religious%20Calendar%202012-13.pdf
Late assignments are not accepted.
Assignments based on collaborative work are graded individually, and should reflect each student’s
original work. The Vanderbilt University Honor Code is available online:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/student_handbook/the-honor-system#honorcode
GRADING
The course integrates grading with instruction. The aim of the grading process is to give students
helpful feedback, evaluate students’ performance, and apply a fair standard of assessment across
students and assignments.
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Written assignments will be evaluated in four areas using the grading scale below. Paper
markings will identify patterns of strengths and weaknesses, first through written comments, then
through marks showing additional examples of the pattern that students will then be expected to
recognize and address in future work. To get feedback on drafts of written assignments before
submitting them, please visit Vanderbilt’s Writing Studio: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/writing/
Areas of assessment
• Completeness: Are all elements of the assignment fully addressed? Does the paper meet
the goals of the assignment? Is the paper appropriately organized—with topic sentences
(e.g., summaries, analytic statements, or arguments) followed by evidence (e.g., examples,
refinements, or details)?
• Analysis: Does the paper synthesize detailed materials into broader points or arguments?
Are broader points presented in students’ own words? Are strengths and weaknesses of
evidence explored?
• Evidence: Is the choice of evidence appropriate? Is the evidence specific (e.g., cases,
quotations, or sub-points)? Is the evidence accurate? Are sources of evidence cited?
• Writing mechanics: Are shortcomings of previous assignments correct or reduced? Is the
paper free of typographical errors? Is the grammar correct?
Grading standard
A: excellent performance in all areas, and unexpectedly fine performance in some.
B: good performance in all or most areas.
C: adequate performance in many, but not all, areas.
D: inadequate performance in many areas.
F: incomplete performance in most areas.
Students may request a re-grade of any assignment by emailing a 500-word justification to
Professor Stark within one week of receiving the original grade.
Final course grades are based on the Vanderbilt University Grading System:
http://registrar.vanderbilt.edu/transcripts/transcript-key/grading-systems/
ASSIGNMENTS
Reading responses (3 responses: each 5% of final grade)
Three reading responses of 500-600 words each are required during the semester. The aims of the
assignments are to allow students to explore new concepts and arguments, to document a
thorough and thoughtful reading of the texts, and to put readings in dialogue with earlier course
material, students’ lived experiences, and current events. At the first class meeting, students will
sign up for the days on which they will write responses. The papers should cover all of the reading
assignments for one class meeting, and be uploaded to OAK by 11:59PM on the evening before the
set of readings will be discussed in class. For an overview of how to read effectively to write a
response, please see the Guide to Reading Social Science appended to the syllabus.
Responses should accomplish four things:
• Summarize the main argument of the reading in one paragraph. What is the author’s main
purpose in writing the piece, and what is his/her novel claim? If appropriate, discuss the
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•
•
•
conventional wisdom, body of scholarship, or scientific evidence that the author is arguing
against.
Identify the type of evidence the author uses. Does the author base his or her claims on
statistics, interviews, observations, historical documents, literature, or philosophical
reflection, for example? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this evidence in light of
the author’s argument.
Reflect on ideas that the piece raises for you, in one of two ways. If there is a reading
question (see schedule), attempt to answer it. Alternatively, describe an example or
counter-example that relates to the theme of the readings. These may be based on current
events, previous readings, or personal experience.
Ask a critical or exploratory question for the author(s).
In-class quizzes (3 quizzes: each 10% of final grade)
Three short quizzes will allow students to demonstrate they have completed the readings,
understood course materials, and engaged with class discussions. The quizzes are cumulative: they
will cover all lecture and reading materials to date but emphasize material from the most recently
completed section.
Research exercises (3 assignments: each 5% of final grade)
Three short research assignments will be due at the start of class as noted on the schedule. The
aims of the assignments are to introduce students to resources for research on the social
dimensions of animals in medicine; and to develop the critical skills needed to evaluate the quality
of a variety of kinds of scholarly evidence. Detailed instructions will be given in class one week
before assignments are due. Research assignments will culminate in the final analysis (see below).
Final analysis (30% of final grade)
The final analysis includes two parts. A summary of each chapter of a recent book on animals in
medicine will be due in class on Monday, April 13, 2015. The summary is 10% of final course
grade. A final review of a recent book on animals in medicine will be due on Wednesday, April 22,
2015. The review is 20% of final course grade. Instructions for the review will be available on
OAK at mid-term. Students may choose to analyze one of the following two books, which are on
reserve at Central Library:
• Kirk, Robert G. W., and Neil Pemberton. Leech. London: Reaktion Books, 2013.
•
Sharp, Lesley A. The Transplant Imaginary: Mechanical Hearts, Animal Parts, and Moral Thinking
in Highly Experimental Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Participation (10% of final grade)
Course participation accounts for students’ efforts to engage in class discussions; contributions to
collaborative work; and attention to current events.
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SCHEDULE
January 5: Welcome
January 7: Where are the animals?
Required
Marx, Patricia. “Pets Allowed: How to Take Your Pet Everywhere.” The New Yorker, October 13,
2014. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/pets-allowed.
Reading question: Animals play many roles in medicine. What role(s) do they play in this article; and
what additional roles can you think of? What social factors shape and pattern people’s health
behavior in relation to animals?
Further reading
Wallace, David Foster. “Consider the Lobster.” Gourmet Magazine. August, 2004.
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster
I. MULTISPECIES MEDICINE
Making and unmaking binaries
January 12: No class
Required
Rock, Melanie, and Patricia Babinec. “Diabetes in People, Cats, and Dogs: Biomedicine and
Manifold Ontologies.” Medical Anthropology 27, no. 4 (2008): 324–52.
Reading question: Diagnosing companion animals with diabetes alongside people affects our
understandings of diseases and of selfhood. In what ways are they affected?
January 14: Humans / animals
Required
Braitman, Laurel. “Chapter 5: Animal Pharm,” Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive
Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Reading question: In the sciences, what creates the sense that there is a natural boundary or a natural
connection between human and nonhuman animals? What political, economic or aesthetic factors might
also be served in creating either similarity or difference serve?
Further reading
Viner, Russell. “Putting Stress in Life: Hans Selye and the Making of Stress Theory.” Social Studies
of Science 29, no. 3 (1999): 391–410.
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Rock, M., Bj Buntain, Jm Hatfield, and B. Hallgrimsson. “Animal-Human Connections, ‘One
Health,’ and the Syndemic Approach to Prevention.” Social Science & Medicine 68, no. 6 (2009):
991–95. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.12.047.
Wolf, Meike. “Is There Really Such a Thing as ‘One Health’? Thinking about a More than Human
World from the Perspective of Cultural Anthropology.” Social Science & Medicine, 2014.
doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.018.
January 19: MLK Day (no class)
Required
Gould, Stephen Jay. “Measuring bodies: Two case studies on the apishness of undesireables.” The
Mismeasure of Man. Revised & Expanded edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.
Reading question: How have scientific claims about animals embedded political assumptions? Do
all scientific claims about animals embed political assumptions?
January 21: Nature/society
Class visit to Art History collection.
Required
Mitman, Gregg. “Chapter 5: Disney’s real-life adventures.” Reel Nature: America’s Romance with
Wildlife on Film. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.
Reading question: How do visual representations of human and non-human animals create the sense
that species are connected or divided?
Further reading
Serpell, James. “People in disguise: Anthropomorphism and the human-pet relationship,” in
Daston, Lorraine and Gregg Mitman eds. Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on
Anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Approaches
January 26: From subjectivity to inter-subjectivity
Research assignment 1 due at the start of class.
Required
Kirk, Robert G.W., and Neil Pemberton “Re-Imagining Bleeders: The Medical Leech in the
Nineteenth Century Bloodletting Encounter.” Medical History 55, no. 3 (July 2011): 355–60.
Reading question: Let’s face it: leeches are gross. But they were (and are!) used as therapies. Often we
think of therapeutic animals as warm and cuddly. Leeches challenge the intuition that pets are the
most common or best therapeutic animals and vice versa. How did physicians teach patents to
relate to leeches; and what contradictions did this create in their own conceptions of leeches?
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Further reading
Daston, Lorraine. “Intelligences,” in Daston, Lorraine, Gregg Mitman eds. Thinking with Animals:
New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Despret, Vinciane. “Responding Bodies and Partial Affinities in Human–Animal Worlds.” Theory,
Culture & Society 30, no. 7–8 (December 1, 2013): 51–76. doi:10.1177/0263276413496852.
January 28: From individuals to interactions
Required
Michalko, Rod. “Introduction” and “Chapter: Two-in-one.” The Two-in-One. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1998.
Further reading
Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2007.
February 2: From genetics to cybernetics
Required
Sharp, Lesley A. “Chapter 2: Hybrid bodies and animal science.” The Transplant Imaginary:
Mechanical Hearts, Animal Parts, and Moral Thinking in Highly Experimental Science. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2013.
Reading question: What is xenotransplanation, and why is it interesting to the author?
Further reading
Haraway, Donna J. “Part III: Tangled species.” When Species Meet. Minneapolis: Univ Of
Minnesota Press, 2007.
Donna Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the
1980s’, Socialist Review, 15, 2 (1985), 65–107, 152.
Cecilia Åsberg (2010) “Enter cyborg:tracing the historiography and ontological turn of feminist
technoscience studies” International Journal of Feminist Technoscience, 30.
Cyborgs Wakefield, J. (June 10, 2013). "TEDGlobal welcomes robot cockroaches". BBC News
Technology.
February 4: Quiz 1
Required
Explore website Aesop’s Anthropology <aesopsanthropology.com>
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II. ANIMAL EXCHANGES
Networks
February 9: Expert systems
Required
Pages 19-29; 50-53. Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002.
Reading question: Mitchell asks, Is there an overarching explanation of social changes that could
otherwise be attributed to single factors, including epidemic, war, or famine? What kind of
explanation can bring together these factors? How does Mitchell conceptualize the mosquitoes—
in what ways are mosquitoes (biological systems) similar or different from the weapons or
fertilizers (political and chemical systems) that Mitchell writes about?
What is “agency”?
February 11: Actor-network theory
Required
Latour, Bruno. The Pasteurization of France. Translated by Alan Sheridan and John Law. Harvard
University Press, 1993: selections.
Markets
February 16: Economies
Todes, Daniel Philip. “From dog to digestive factory.” Pavlov’s Physiology Factory, 2002.
Further reading
Sharp, Leslie. 2011 “Monkey business.” Social Text 29 (106):43–69.
Daston, Lorraine. “The Moral Economy of Science.” Osiris 10 (1995): 3–24.
Kirk, Robert G. W. “‘Wanted-Standard Guinea Pigs’: Standardisation and the Experimental
Animal Market in Britain Ca. 1919-1947.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 39, no. 3 (September 2008): 280–91. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.06.002.
Models
February 18: Model organism
Required
Kohler, Robert E. Selections from Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
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Reading question: What are “model organisms” and how do they differ from other kinds of animals?
Further reading
Ankeny, Rachel and Sabina Lionelli. “What’s so special about model organisms?” Unpublished
paper. <https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/>
Rader, Karen Ann. Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900 - 1955.
Princeton University Press, 2004.
Creager, Angela N. H. The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Endersby, James. “Chapter 7: Cavia porcellus: Mathematical Guinea Pigs.” A Guinea Pig’s History of
Biology. Harvard University Press.
February 23: Constituting communities
Required
Leonelli, Sabina, Rachel A. Ankeny, Nicole C. Nelson, and Edward Ramsden, "Making Organisms
Model Humans: Situated Models in Alcohol Research," Science in Context 27:3 (2014), 485-509.
Further reading
Mitchell, Sandra. “Anthropomorphism and cross-species modeling,” in Daston, Lorraine and
Gregg Mitman, eds. Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2005.
Friese, Carrie, and Adele E. Clarke. “Transposing Bodies of Knowledge and Technique: Animal
Models at Work in Reproductive Sciences.” Social Studies of Science 42, no. 1 (2012): 31–52.
doi:10.1177/0306312711429995.
Nelson, Nicole C., "Modeling Mouse, Human, and Discipline: Epistemic Scaffolds in Animal
Behavior Genetics," Social Studies of Science 43:1 (2013), 3-29.
February 25: Quiz 2
Required
Explore website of the American Association of Veterinary Medicine. <https://www.avma.org/>
March 1-8: Spring break
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III. RE-FIGURING ANIMALS
Language
March 9: Metaphor, euphemism and other language techniques
Class visit from Professor Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman, Jewish Studies
Research assignment 2 due at the start of class.
Required:
Lynch, Michael E. “Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object:
Laboratory Culture and Ritual Practice in the Neurosciences.” Social Studies of Science 18, no. 2 (May
1, 1988): 265–89.
Pp1-6. Ackerman-Lieberman, Phillip, and Rakefet Zalashik, eds. A Jew’s Best Friend?: The Image of the
Dog Throughout Jewish History. Brighton  ; Portland, Or: Sussex Academic Press, 2013.
March 11: Communication
Required
Pearson, Susan. “Speaking Bodies, Speaking Minds: Animals, Language, History.” History and
Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 91–108. doi:10.1111/hith.10689.
Further reading
Crist, Eileen. “Can an Insect Speak? The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language.” Social Studies of
Science 34, no. 1 (2004): 7–43. doi:10.1177/0306312704040611.
Radick, Gregory. The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language. Chicago: University Of
Chicago Press, 2008.
Myers, Shirley Shultz, and Jane K. Fernandes. “Deaf Studies: A Critique of the Predominant U.S.
Theoretical Direction.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 15, no. 1 (2010): 30–49.
doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/10.1093/deafed/enp017.
Materiality
March 16: When the world bites back
Required
Turkel, William J. Spark from the Deep: How Shocking Experiments with Strongly Electric Fish Powered
Scientific Discovery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013: pages 93-122.
Further reading
Barad, Karen. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to
Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (March 2003): 801–31.
doi:10.1086/345321.
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Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. An epistemology of the concrete: twentieth-century histories of life. Durham [NC]:
Duke University Press, 2010.
Law & ethics
March 18: Bioethics
Required
Franklin, Sarah B. “Chapter 5: Death.” Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy. Durham: Duke
University Press Books, 2007.
Further reading
White, Paul. “The experimental animal in Victorian Britain,” in Daston, Lorraine and Gregg
Haraway, Donna J. “Chapter 3: Shared Suffering: Instrumental Relations between Laboratory
Animals and their People.” When Species Meet. Minneapolis: Univ of Minnesota Press, 2007.
March 23: Policy
Visit from Professor Ron Emeson, Dept of Pharmacology and Chair IACUC
Required
Kirk, Robert G. W. “A Brave New Animal for a Brave New World: The British Laboratory
Animals Bureau and the Constitution of International Standards of Laboratory Animal Production
and Use, circa 1947-1968.” Isis. 101, no. 1 (March 2010): 62–94.
Further reading
Michael, Mike, and Lynda Birke. “Enrolling the Core Set: The Case of the Animal
Experimentation Controversy.” Social Studies of Science 24, no. 1 (1994): 81.
Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Washington: National Academies of Science Press,
2011. < grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/Guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals.pdf>
March 25: Moral sensibilities
Required
Kirk, Robert G. W. “In Dogs We Trust? Intersubjectivity, Response-Able Relations, and the
Making of Mine Detector Dogs: RESPONSE-ABLE RELATIONS.” Journal of the History of the
Behavioral Sciences 50, no. 1 (January 2014): 1–36. doi:10.1002/jhbs.21642.
Further reading
Sharp, Lesley A. “Perils before Swine.” BioInsecurity and Vulnerability, edited with Nancy N. Chen
SAR Press, Santa Fe, 2014.
Guenther, Lisa. “Chapter 6: Beyond Dehumanization.” Solitary Confinement.
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Emotion
March 30: Second nature?
Required
MacLeod, Alec. “Dog as Self and Other.” Language and Ecology Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009).
Reading question: How do activities with animals come to be culturally accepted? Is it possible to
change people’s visceral, gut feelings? If so, how?
April 1: Learning to feel
Required
Sanders, Clinton R. “Killing with kindness: Veterinary euthanasia and the social construction of
personhood,” Sociological Forum, 1995, vol 10.2: 195-214.
Space
April 6: Labs and fields
Required
Asdal, Kristin. “Subjected to Parliament The Laboratory of Experimental Medicine and the
Animal Body.” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 6 (December 1, 2008).
Further reading
Bont, Raf De. Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870-1930. Chicago  ;
London: University Of Chicago Press, 2015.
April 8: Civic space as intimate spaces
Required
Jerolmac, C. Chapter 2 “Do Not Feed the Pigeons”: Cultural Heritage and the Politics of Place in
Venice and London. The Urban Pigeon.
Reading question: Jerolmac uses the phrase the “social experience of animals.” How does physical
space affect the social experience of animals? How does medical spaces affect the social
experience of animals?
Further reading
Michalko, Rod. The Two-in-One. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
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Professions
April 13: Veterinary medicine
Chapter summary (final analysis section I) due at the start of class.
Required
Jones, Susan D. “Chapter 3: The value of animal health for human health.” Valuing Animals:
Veterinarians and Their Patients in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Further reading
Irvine, Leslie, and Jenny R. Vermilya. “Gender Work in a Feminized Profession The Case of
Veterinary Medicine.” Gender & Society 24, no. 1 (February 1, 2010): 56–82.
doi:10.1177/0891243209355978.
April 15: Interviews with authors
Research assignment 3 due at the start of class.
April 20: Quiz 3 and wrap up
April 22: Final analysis due
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