3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

How did ancient people relate to their environment—the animals, plants, landscapes, and weather with which they interacted? How have modern binary conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ or ‘human’ and ‘animal’ influenced our interpretation of ancient texts (along with ancient societies)? What is “the zoological gaze?” This course will focus on these questions and more as it investigates conceptions of nature in the texts of the Hebrew Bible, as well as texts and material culture from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), and the Levant (modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan). We will interrogate various interpretive lenses, including Posthumanism, Animal Studies, and Metaphor Theory, as we explore themes such as creation, nature and divinity, and animals in rituals, legal texts, and prophecies, among others. No previous familiarity with Hebrew language or the Hebrew Bible is needed.