 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
President Skorton has declared the 2005-2006 academic year the "Year of Public Engagement." Throughout the year, we will spotlight individuals and groups within the University community who embody the spirit of public engagement at the local, state, national, and/or international levels.
Teresa Mangum
Inspired by the Center on Teaching’s inaugural Service-Learning Institute, Teresa Mangum developed a course for the English department, “Literature and Society: Capturing Animals.” The class explored humanistic perspectives on relationships between humans and animals in fiction and film—from Black Beauty to The Lives of the Monster Dogs to The Woman and the Ape—and in the work of historians and philosophers. At the same time, the class members collected their own stories about humans and animals. During weekly service hours at the Iowa City/Coralville Animal Care and Adoption Center, students interviewed and observed director Misha Goodman and her staff members as well as volunteers, the humane officer and veterinarian, members of the public who relinquish and adopt animals, homeless people who depend on the Center to help them care for their pets, and the animals themselves.
The students reflected on connections among film, literature, and philosophy and their own observations at the Animal Center in “Shelter Stories” journals and in fascinating final projects. These projects included studies of the human impulse to describe animals in anthropomorphic terms, the meaning of “freedom” in the context of animal existence, connections between violence to animals and to humans, and strategies for motivating empathy and action on behalf of animals through storytelling techniques.
