1
课程详述
COURSE SPECIFICATION
以下课程信息可能根据实际授课需要或在课程检讨之后产生变动。如对课程有任何疑问，请联
系授课教师。
The course information as follows may be subject to change, either during the session because of unforeseen
circumstances, or following review of the course at the end of the session. Queries about the course should be
directed to the course instructor.
1.
课程名称 Course Title
西方文学与思想名篇讲读：人类与非人类世界专题
Western Literary and Critical Writings: The Human and the Nonhuman
2.
授课院系
Originating Department
社会科学中心 Center for Social Sciences
3.
课程编号
Course Code
SS048
4.
课程学分 Credit Value
2
5.
课程类别
Course Type
通识选修课程 General Education (GE) Elective Courses
6.
授课学期
Semester
春季 Spring
7.
授课语言
Teaching Language
英文 English
8.
授课教师、所属学系、联系方
式（如属团队授课，请列明其
他授课教师）
Instructor(s), Affiliation&
Contact
（For team teaching, please list
all instructors）
周星月 Xingyue ZHOU
人文社科荣誉学会 Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts
联系方式 Contact: zhouxy3@mail.sustech.edu.cn
9.
实验员/助教、所属学系、联系
方式
Tutor/TA(s), Contact
无 NA
10.
选课人数限额(可不填)
Maximum Enrolment
（Optional）
2
授课方式
Delivery Method
习题/辅导/讨论
Tutorials
实验/实习
Lab/Practical
其它(请具体注明)
Other（Please specify）
总学时
Total
11.
学时数
Credit Hours
32
12.
先修课程、其它学习要求
Pre-requisites or Other
Academic Requirements
无 NA
13.
后续课程、其它学习规划
Courses for which this course
is a pre-requisite
无 NA
14.
其它要求修读本课程的学系
Cross-listing Dept.
无 NA
教学大纲及教学日历 SYLLABUS
15.
教学目标 Course Objectives
本课程以“人类与非人类世界”为主题，串联起西方从古至今在文采和思辨性上俱佳、背景丰富且影响深远的名短篇。本课
的设计基于三个目的：1）引导学生细读西方人文经典原文，所选篇目难度和篇幅适当，适合用以提高学生的英文感受力
和文本分析力；2）作为文学史和思想史上的名篇，每篇文本又都可以小窥大，各自代表着一段重要的历史思想、文化主
题、或文学风格，适合用以为学生提供西方人文发展的通识教育；3）全课篇目围绕着一个核心的主题，有重点地带领学
生进行思辨。通过西方从古至今的“人类与非人类世界”主题，可以展现西方伦理学的基础和近代变迁，人与动物的界限如
何定义了人类社会又如何被挑战，历史上科学与人文思想的不断对话，不同的生态或社会视角如何不断地理解和反思人在
世界中的地位。这些话题都可以启发学生对世界的观察、对人之为人的意识、省视人文与科学的关系、和更智慧地面对当
下的环境问题。
Through the theme “The Human and the Nonhuman,” this course selects a cluster of influential Western literary and/or
critical writings. This course has three objectives: 1) guide students to do close reading on important writings in English.
The selected texts are appropriate in length and level of difficulty for non-native students to enhance their literary
sensibility and textual analytical skills; 2) each selected text, as a famous piece or excerpt from the history of Western
literature, is representative of its larger historical, cultural, or literary context, and suitable for the undergraduate general
education in western humanities; 3) all the selected texts are around a focal theme to guide students into a critical topic.
Through “The Human and the Nonhuman” throughout Western history, we will discuss the foundation of Western ethics
and its modern change, how the separation from animals has defined the human society and how the defined
boundaries have been challenged in recent discourses, how sciences and humanities have constantly dialogued with
each other, how we think of our position in the world from different ecological or social perspectives, etc. These topics
would inspire students to observe the larger world, reflect on the human existence, engage humanities with science, and
face our contemporary environmental mutation.
16.
预达学习成果 Learning Outcomes
本课程预期让学生掌握以下技能和知识：
对英文文本的文学性或思辨性有基本的分析
掌握基本的英文分析性写作方式
用英文作简短报告
了解重要的西方人文作品
训练一定的自主思辨能力
3
Upon successful completion, students will be able to:
Acquire basic analytical skills toward English literary and critical writings
Grasp basic skills of academic critical writing in English
Give brief presentation in English
Grasp important works in Western humanities
Strengthen their self-reliant and critical thinking
17.
课程内容及教学日历 （如授课语言以英文为主，则课程内容介绍可以用英文；如团队教学或模块教学，教学日历须注明
主讲人）
Course Contents (in Parts/Chapters/Sections/Weeks. Please notify name of instructor for course section(s), if
this is a team teaching or module course.)
Lecture 1: Introducing the Class (2-credit hours)
Course introduction
Course planning, reading list, and overview of assignments
What you can expect to learn from this course? Why do we focus on the relationship between the human and the
nonhuman? Why is it important? I will explain the designed learning objectives and the logic of the selected readings. I
will ask them warming-up questions to start thinking about our theme of this term. I will then give a short overview of the
significance of the human-nonhuman distinction and its relevant debates.
* Each of the following lectures will be organized around a central piece of limited length. On the class I will first ask
students to present on the text of the week that they have chosen in the first lecture and ask their own critical questions,
then we will discuss and analyze textual details together. Along the way I will introduce both the historical, cultural, and
philosophical background of the work/author, and the critical views toward the topic of human-nonhuman relations under
discussion.
Lecture 2: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ch.1; excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Aristotle
Ancient Greek ethics
Modern philosophical views
Key topic: how Western politics and ethics are founded on the definition of human from animals.
Lecture 3: Ovid, Metamorphoses (Ch.15; excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Ancient Greek and Roman mythology
Ovid
Metamorphosis as a theme
Key topics: the underlying worldview in the stories of metamorphosis; the ecology of change; the primal connection
between human and nonhuman.
Lecture 4: Animal Souls (2-credit hours)
Montaigne, Essays II, 12
Descartes, “Letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, 23 Nov. 1646”
Animal vs. machine
Key topics: the historical debate of the question - does animal have the soul? Science and philosophy in the 16
th
-century
Europe; the split of Western philosophy.
Lecture 5: The Houyhnhnmsland (2-credit hours)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Ch.4; excerpt)
Social satirical writing
Critique of language
Key topics: early utopic writing; what if the role of human and animal was inverted?; is the Houyhnhnms’ society a better
one?
Lecture 6: Rousseau, Second Discourse (excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Degeneration of human society
Compassion
Key topics: the origin and the foundations of inequality among men; the distinction between human and beasts according
to Rousseau; how to look at the degeneration narrative of human society present in both Rousseau and Swift?
4
Lecture 7: Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre” (2-credit hours)
Human vs. machine
Modern resonances
The unconscious
Key topic: what if we are ourselves half human half puppet, guided by unconscious mechanism?
Lecture 8: Emerson, “Nature” (excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Transcendentalism
Divinity and nature
The transparent eyeball
Key topic: the relationship between the human’s synthetic vision and the divine nature; can the human be divine?
Lecture 9: Guest lecture (2-credit hours)
The influence of Darwin
The animal-human analogy in Western and Eastern literatures
Lecture 10: Carl Sagan, “The Abstraction of Beasts” (2-credit hours)
Animal language
Animal sentience and intelligence
Key topic: how the early human-animal relation is revised? Re-envision the kinship in the long evolution.
Lecture 11: J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Animal rights
Philosophers and animals
Key topic: the ethics of eating animals.
Lecture 12: Upstream Color (film screening) (2-credit hours)
Death and metamorphosis
Cinema and ecology
Lecture 13: Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think (excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Plant language
Rhizomes and neurons
Amazonian multinaturalism and perspectivism
Key topics: plant sentience?; the philosophy of plasticity and interconnectedness; the ethics of multinatural world views.
Lecture 14: Ursula K. Le Guin, “Mazes” (2-credit hours)
Lab ethics
Alien communication
Through the perspective of the other
Key topics: how to communicate and sympathize with other species?; how possible or impossible it is?
Lecture 15: Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (excerpt) (2-credit hours)
Cyborg
Feminism
Key topics: the contemporary challenges to traditional humanist thinking and eurocentric/anthropocentric values; what is
posthumanism?
Lecture 16: Conclusion (2-credit hours)
Timothy Morton, “Critical Thinking” (Intro to The Ecological Thought; excerpt)
Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene
Microbiome and co-existence
Key topics: how to think the hyperobjects and the microorganisms?; how to look at ourselves as ecological beings?
18.
教材及其它参考资料 Textbook and Supplementary Readings
5
This course will not use regular textbook. Readings will be selected from the following books:
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Ed. Roger Crisp. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Ovid. Metamorphoses (Oxford World’s Classics). Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
Michel de Montaigne. The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics). Trans. M. A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 1987.
René Descartes. “Letter to the Marquess of Newcastle.” In Stuart M. Shieber, ed. The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as
the Hallmark of Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, pp. 35.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels (Norton Critical Edition). Ed. Albert J. Rivero. New York & London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1996.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and The Social
Contract. Trans. John T. Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Heinrich von Kleist. “On the Marionette Theatre.” Trans. Thomas G. Neumiller. The Drama Review 16:3 (Sep., 1972), pp.
22-26.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature and Selected Essays (Penguin Classics). New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
Carl Sagan. “The Abstractions of Beasts.” Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. New
York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
Eduardo Kohn. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London:
University of California Press, 2013.
Ursula K. Le Guin. “Mazes.” The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. New York: Saga
Press, 2016.
Donna Haraway. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
Timothy Morton, “Introduction: Critical Thinking,” The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2010.
Film: Shane Carruth, Upstream Color (2013).
课程评估 ASSESSMENT
19.
评估形式
Type of
Assessment
评估时间
Time
占考试总成绩百分比
% of final
score
违纪处罚
Penalty
备注
Notes
出勤 Attendance
课堂表现
Class
Performance
20%
小测验
Quiz
课程项目 Projects
平时作业
Assignments
期中考试
Mid-Term Test
期中报告
Mid-Term
Presentation
20%
期末考试
Final Exam
期末报告
Final
Presentation
60%
其它（可根据需要
改写以上评估方
式）Others (The
above may be
modified as
necessary)
20.
记分方式 GRADING SYSTEM
6
A. 十三级等级制 Letter Grading
B. 二级记分制（通过/不通过） Pass/Fail Grading
课程审批 REVIEW AND APPROVAL
21.
本课程设置已经过以下责任人/委员会审议通过
This Course has been approved by the following person or committee of authority
所列英文文献无