First-Year Seminars 110NN - The Nonhuman

This course will examine representations of figures not considered human, focusing on the nonhuman animal, with attention to the monster and the machine. We will analyze the literary and visual techniques with which these figures are depicted, the social and political concerns they address, and the tenuous boundary between human and nonhuman. Authors and filmmakers may include Cronenberg, Fowler, Hitchcock, Hurston, Kafka, London, Martel, Poe, Reichardt, Sewell, Spiegelman, Wells, and Woolf.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.