This summer, I taught a course called Animals, Ethics and Food: Doing Multispecies Ethnography at the University of Washington in the Comparative History of Ideas Program (CHID). The course was unique because we got to travel to Pigs Peace Sanctuary for one day per week. While at the sanctuary, students were each paired with a singular pig for the quarter and wrote ethnographies of the pigs’ lives and experiences of life at the sanctuary. They learned their histories from before the sanctuary, they came to understand certain features of the sanctuary as a place in the world, and they learned about the care of pigs as a species in general. Judy Woods, the director of Pigs Peace, shared so much wisdom and experience about how she learned about pig care and how the sanctuary evolved based on the needs and preferences of the pigs. The experience was *wonderful* and I can’t wait to teach it again (hopefully next summer). Here is a short article just published in the CHID Newsletter recapping the quarter and talking a bit more in depth about our work together with the pigs at the sanctuary.
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Glad to see you’re back to blogging. Those students were (are) so fortunate to have that experience. There is no better teaching tool than experience.
Totally – I just can’t believe the difference it made actually being there face-to-face with the pigs. So much more profound a learning experience than just reading about these topics…
That looks amazing. I bet there were some interesting reflections.
SUCH interesting reflections, Lucy. Their ethnographies were great – as were the journals they kept throughout the course.
This is so neat–I have never heard of anything like this. Clicking on the links now!