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Texas Courses

Baylor University

Environmental Sciences

Animal Enrichment Field School

Heidi Marcum

This class is designed to provide hands-on training in the enrichment of captive animals through individual and group work, often without direct supervision. Class objectives include: experience in enriching captive animals; hands-on, practical experience with a current environmental problem; experience with designing enrichment activities, taking data and writing up results; experience presenting results using Powerpoint.

Animals and Human Society ELG
Animals & Human Society


Midwestern State University


A Cultural History of Animals in Western Culture From Antiquity to the Present

Kristen Lodge

This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the cultural history of animals, an important branch of a new and rapidly growing field of scholarly inquiry known as Animal Studies. We will examine ways in which animals have been perceived in the West from antiquity to the present day through a study of history, philosophy, literature, and the arts. We will discuss questions such as how and why our view of animals has changed over the centuries, what distinguishes humans from other animals, what ethical obligations we have toward nimals, and how different representations of animals relate to the historical, philosophical, and cultural backgrounds of different time periods.

Sam Houston University

Animal Science

Animals and Society

Leanne Wiley

This course will acquaint the student with the broad role of animals in society from national, global and historic perspectives. The impact of animals and domestic livestock on economic, social and political policy will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on agricultural and non-agricultural uses, societal and cultural perspectives, consumer influences, animal ethics, animal research, appropriate animal care, livestock quality assurance programs, animal welfare, animal rights and the animal-human bond.

Agricultural Sciences

Animals in Society

Dwayne Pavelock


Texas Christian University

Texas Christian University Human-Animal Relationships Minor

The Interdisciplinary minor in Human-Animal Relationships (HARE) provide theoretical and practical expertise in the crucial, diverse, yet often overlooked roles animals play in human society, culture and well-being. Moreover, the minor helps students understand how humans impact the lives of other animals, both wild and domestic.

Animals, Culture and Society

Carol Thompson

Non-Human animals are an ever-present part of our lives. This presence, even though salient, is often taken for granted by humans. Even sociologists, for the most part, have neglected the study of animal/human interaction and the importance of animals in human societies. This course will attempt to correct this oversight by addressing the roles, places, meanings, and significance animals have in human society. We will explore the cross-cultural differences and the major social and philosophical arguments regarding the place of animals and the capacity of animals to think, feel, express, interact etc. We will also examine beliefs, social practices and policies regarding animals and their well-being and the social, cultural, and political bases of these practices and policies. This course will apply sociological approaches to the study of human-animal relationships. It will be revealed that humans are not consistent in our perceptions of, or relations with, other animals, indicating that socially constructed realities extend into human/animal relations. We will challenge traditional representations of nonhuman animals and connect these representations to enduring social problems such as racism, sexism and violence against the vulnerable. Central to this course will be an exploration of the ways in which animal lives intersect with human social life. The overarching goal is to examine these topics in a way that is both scholarly and practical, thereby providing a rich and meaningful intellectual experience.

Texas Woman’s University

Women’s Studies

Ecofeminist Theorizing

Claire Sahlin

This graduate seminar explores ecofeminist thinking concerning interconnections between the exploitation of nature and the subjugation of women and people of color, while considering ecofeminist reflections on activism and spirituality/religion. Through assigned readings, documentary films, guided discussion, and projects, we’ll ask questions about the meaning of environmental justice, while studying ecofeminist perspectives concerning such topics as vegetarianism, corporate globalization, colonization, and religious fundamentalisms. Our study of ecofeminist theorizing, spirituality, and activism will prompt us to examine assumptions about epistemology (how we come to understand the world and whose knowledge counts), ontology (how we envision the nature of the universe, including the relatedness of beings and entities in the world), and ethics (the nature of moral behavior).


Seminar in Environmental Ethics

Eugene Hargrove

An intensive analysis of new positions in environmental ethics with special emphasis on their theoretical value as a contribution to contemporary philosophy and their practical value with regard to environmental policy and decision making.


University of North Texas

University of North Texas Animal Assisted Therapy Program

The Center for Animal Assisted Therapy (CAAT) promotes human and animal welfare through the partnership of people and pets. The mission of the Center for Animal Assisted Therapy (CAAT) at the University of North Texas is to train professionals and volunteers to work with their pets to: 1) facilitate the development of students in Kindergarten through 12th grade with pet-assisted educational programs; and 2) enhance the emotional well-being of persons of all ages through positive human-animal interactions. The CAAT has three primary focus areas: 1) training, 2) research and 3) community services. They provide a certificate for a home-school training program.

Courses include:

Animal Assisted Therapy

Cynthia Chandler

Animal-assisted therapy is the incorporation of qualified animals into a therapeutic environment. Explores techniques to facilitate animal-assisted therapeutic interventions in a variety of settings, including schools, counseling agencies, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, prisons and facilities for individuals with developmental disabilities. A variety of animals can be suitable for therapy programs. The student need not have an animal or pet to take the course.

University of Texas Arlington


American Literature and Animal Studies

Neill Matheson

Animal studies has emerged in recent years as a rich, dynamic interdisciplinary field. This course will consider various animal studies problems and theories alongside American literary texts. Nonhuman animals have figured prominently in American literature from its origins, looming especially large in some well-known texts, but appearing in countless others—white whales and ravens are only the beginning. Animal studies provides a revealing vantage on these literary creatures. (The very word creature, with its root meaning of “something created,” may suggest a deep affinity between animals and imaginative or literary creation.) At the same time, literary texts offer a powerful medium for exploring central questions in animal studies. Animals bring to the surface anxieties, fantasies, and contradictions that are entrenched in American culture.
Nonhuman animals embody an alterity that exceeds perceived human differences such as race or gender; the accusation of animality has often been employed to denigrate human others. Yet animals are also familiar, present and often taken for granted in many of our lives, most commonly as pets or as food. Animals are “good to think,” as the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss claimed: as ideas or symbols, they are potent meaning-makers, generating stories that help us to understand ourselves and our relation to the world around us. But they are more than just ideas: Donna Haraway contends that dogs “are not here just to think with. They are here to live with.” American literary texts engage with the ongoing, often everyday practices and experiences that bring humans and actual nonhuman animals together in material contact and
interaction. Primary texts include various works of American literature and popular culture, such as London’s The Call of the Wild and Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes, as well as several films. We will also read critical, theoretical, and cultural studies writing that engages with a wide range of issues in animal studies.

University of Texas Pan American

Social Work

Spirituality and Social Work

Catherine Faver

This is taught as an elective in our MSSW program. Relevant topics include vegetarianism as spiritual practice and responsibility; the spiritual dimension of the human-animal bond; the therapeutic effects of companion animals in various social contexts.

Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Institutions, Organizations, and Communities

Catherine Faver

This is a required social work course. Relevant topics I included in the course: impact of the natural environment on human health and well-being (including the impact of factory farming and the benefits of vegetarianism); the link between animal abuse and family violence; the therapeutic effects of animals in various social contexts such as residential and other treatment facilities.

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