HAS Courses in Political Science
University of California, Irvine
Claire Kim
Political Science
The Politics of Animal Rights. This course examines the animal rights/welfare movement's efforts to transform the moral, practical, and legal standing of nonhuman animals in the contemporary U.S. Topics to be covered include: philosophical debates about the moral status of animals; current knowledge about animal minds and emotions; factory farming; the use of animals in scientific experimentation and product testing; the use of animals for human entertainment; the ethics of vegetarianism and veganism; competing ideologies and strategies within the animal rights/welfare movement; and the connections among speciesism, sexism, and racism.
University of California, Irvine
Claire Kim
Political Science
Race, Gender, Species. This class examines the intersections among race, gender, and species in Western culture. Questions to be addressed include: How have the categories of race, gender, and species been constructed and reproduced in intimate relation to one another? How have bodies categorized as nonwhite, nonmale, and/or nonhuman been imagined, exploited, and subjugated historically? To what degree and in what ways has the �domestication� of nonhuman animals served as the template for modes of treatment toward nonwhites and women? What are the connections (or lack thereof) among justice struggles on behalf of groups of color, women, and nonhuman animals today? What happens when these justice struggles collide and proponents of racial equality, sex equality, and species equality find themselves at odds? Do ecological perspectives offer a way to integrate these struggles or do they in fact work against some or all of them?
