Week 3 Framing Questions

Seminar Texts

  • de Montaigne, Michel. “An Apology for Raymond Sebond.” The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. Eds. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Gordonsville, VA: Berg Publishers, 2007. 57-58. Print.
  • Descartes, René. “From the Letters of 1646 and 1649.” The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. Eds. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Gordonsville, VA: Berg Publishers, 2007. 59-62. Print.
  • Gardner, Iain. web animations, 2011
  • Halas & Batchelor, Animal Farm. 1954. UK. 72 min.
  • Orwell, George. Animal Farm. 1946. New York, NY: Plume, 2003. Print.
  • Sanders, Clinton R. and Arnold Arluke. “Speaking for Dogs.” The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. Eds. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Gordonsville, VA: Berg Publishers, 2007. 63-71. Print.
  • Tupicoff, Dennis. Darra Dogs. 1993. Australia. 10 min.

Framing Questions (7)
Respond to each of the following questions with a paragraph.

  1. In the excerpts of his letters reproduced in The Animals Reader, Descartes is responding to Montaigne’s “An Apology for Raymond Sebond,” written almost a hundred years earlier. What do you think Descartes would say now (almost 450 years later) in response to Sanders’s and Arluke’s article, “Speaking for Dogs?” Write a few sentences representing his perspective. And what might Montaigne say in response to the same article? Write a few sentences reflective of Montaigne’s views.
  2. Choose a non-human animal character that occurs in both Orwell’s original Animal Farm and in Halas and Batchelor’s animated adaptation. Analyze each version of the character according to Wells’s four categories of representation.
  3. What are the functions of anthropomorphism that Sanders and Arluke identify in Speaking for Dogs?
  4. What are the functions of “critical anthropomorphism” proposed by Wells?
  5. With these perspectives in mind, what, in your view, are the challenges to and/or opportunities for understanding that arise from our anthropomorphic interactions with and representations of non-human animals?
  6. Identify at least two or three rhetorical devices at play in the film and book versions of Animal Farm and discuss their effects on you as the viewer/reader.
  7. Further, identify at least one rhetorical device used in either Tupicoff’s Darra Dogs or Iain Gardner’s rotoscoped wolves and discuss its effect on your viewing of the animal subjects.

Due:
Seminar, Week 3—9:00am, Thursday, April 19.

Formatting Requirements

  • Bring 2 hardcopies to seminar.
  • Number each response (1-7).
  • Name, date, week #, and program title.
  • Number and staple multiple pages.

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