Animal Forms: poetry and the non-human

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Courses / Modules / ENGL3097 Animal Forms: poetry and the non-human

When you'll study it: Semester 1
CATS points: 15
ECTS points: 7.5
Level: Level 6
Module lead: William May
Academic year: 2025-26

Module overview

What can animals teach us about the human and non-human? What do the creative forms we use to describe them show us about human form and the other? In this module, you will read a range of poetic and critical material which explores the porous boundaries between person, pet, and predator, and consider animals from the domestic cat to charismatic megafauna. Your journey will take you from ecocriticism and bioethics to circuses, zoos, and the wilderness. The module will include a range of poetry, from Anglo-Saxon riddles to nonsense poetry, and also give you the opportunity to write your own. Over the course of the module, the range of critical, human, and animal encounters aims to reshape the way we consider language, being, and our relationship with the world.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

draw on philosophical and ethical arguments in literary analysis
use poetry analysis as a prompt for creative work
plan and develop a research essay on poetry

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

a range of poetic forms and techniques
the historical and ethical contexts for our depiction of the non-human in literature
the philosophical questions raised by studying human and non-human relations

Cognitive Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

respond creatively to questions of historical and current importance
debate philosophical questions drawing upon cultural knowledge
develop intellectual and creative links between culture and ethics

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

explore and identity patterns across a range of different textual material
develop creative confidence
design and implement your own intellectual and creative projects

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include • Seminars • Learning support hours • Individual consultations Learning activities include • Independent study, including reading and writing • Group discussion • Peer appraisal of writing This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible contact hour, 5 in total, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour may include (but need not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions. In this module, these hours will be particularly focused on supporting and workshopping your creative responses.

��TV time
Type	Hours
Teaching	27
Wider reading or practice	53
Follow-up work	10
Completion of assessment task	30
Preparation for scheduled sessions	30
Total study time	150

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Onno Oerlemans (2018). Poetry and Animals: Blurring and Boundaries with the Human. Columbia University Press.

Laurence Buell (1995). The Environmental Imagination. Harvard University Press.

Mike Malay (2018). The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan.

Alisdair Cochrane (2010). An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan.

Cheryll Glotflety and Harold Fromm (1996). The Ecocriticism Reader. University of Georgia.

Tom L. Beauchamp and R.G. Frey, (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics. Oxford University Press.

Assessment

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Portfolio	100%

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Portfolio	100%

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Portfolio	100%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External

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