VAST Students Gone to the Dogs

This past spring, Lauren Blakeslee ’08(Saylorsburg, Pa.) often found herself fielding questions from friends about her Values and Science/Technology (VAST) class. “Wait, I don’t get it – it’s just all about dogs? That’s the course?” The Dog Course challenged students to examine America’s most popular pet from literary, philosophical, archeological, biological, and technological perspectives.

“I enjoyed tackling the controversial question of the course: ‘is the dog really ‘man’s best friend’ or ‘nature’s most successful parasite,’” explains Blakeslee, a double major in English and Spanish. “It forced us to look deeper into the dog’s role in our society and recognize the stereotypes found in our attitudes toward dogs, and consider their capability of possessing a more complex, self-interested agenda. Have we trained them or have they trained us? The beginnings of the human-canine relationship have been traced back to thousands upon thousands of years ago. It is fascinating to explore that history and the evolution of the species.”

Patricia Donahue, professor of English, first offered the Dog Course four years ago. Because of other teaching commitments, she was unable to offer the class again until this spring when Bianca Falbo, assistant professor of English, agreed to take on a section. They often combined activities, including the campus dog show at the end of the semester, allowing students in both sections to work together. Donahue and Falbo plan to offer the course again this spring.

“I’ve had dogs virtually all my life,” says Donahue, who owns two Bichon Frises. “I love dogs. I thought that teaching a course on dogs would allow me to explore one of my passions. I also thought this topic was one that VAST was well-designed to handle: it is a familiar subject, one for which commonsensical understanding could be richly complicated and problematized through the application of diverse scientific, technological, and ethical perspectives.”

“I really enjoy collaborative teaching, with the right person of course,” she continues. “Bianca and I talk about teaching all the time. And it is satisfying to have a chance to work together on a specific class, sharing ideas, designing assignments.”

Students participated in a variety of assignments and activities to deepen their understanding of dogs while sharpening their analytical and writing skills. Each student researched the cultural history of a breed for a final project and presented his or her findings through a poster session at the dog show. Projects included the breed’s earliest origins, role in human history, analyses of literary, artistic, and cultural representations, analyses of breed standards, and interviews with modern-day owners and breeders.

“The course examined the relationship between dogs and humans from a range of disciplinary perspectives and considered the ethical issues and questions raised by this material,” explains Falbo. “We read, for example, literary representations of dog love, psychological discussions of the bonds people form with dogs, and philosophical discussions of animal rights. We also read and discussed various theories about the evolution of dogs from wolves based on genetic and fossil evidence.”

Faculty from various departments lectured on dogs from their particular discipline’s perspective. Those who volunteered their time include: George Panichas, Hogg Professor and head of philosophy, on ethics and animal rights; Charles Holliday, professor of biology, and his dog Roger, on the dog’s evolution from the wolf; Robert Allan, associate professor of psychology, on animal learning and behavior; and Gabrielle Britton, assistant professor of psychology. Julia Offen, visiting assistant professor of anthropology and sociology, with Luka, her Hurricane Katrina rescue dog, conducted a screening and discussion of her ethnographic documentary about a dog park community. Jeannine Pinto, assistant professor of psychology, brought her German shepherd for a talk on training methods.

Blakeslee, who owns a black Labrador retriever named Cleo, appreciated the unique dynamic of the class. She chose the Lab for her final project, discovering that black was the only acceptable color under American Kennel Club standards at the turn of the century.

“Professor Donahue’s style of teaching was never dull,” says Blakeslee. “She brought spontaneity and originality to the classroom, which kept us on our toes.”

For her final project, biology major Emily Dobrowolski ’08 (Whitehall, Pa.) collaborated with another student to research the Bichon Frise. The owner of a Jack Russell terrier named Spike, Dobrowolski enjoyed the challenging writing assignments based on readings from books such as Willie Morris’ My Dog Skip, Caroline Knapp’s Pack of Two, and Vilmos Csanyi and Richard E. Quandt’s If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind.

“Professor Falbo was very enthusiastic about the course material and subject matter,” she says. “My favorite aspect was the books [she] chose for reading assignments. Each book contained a different viewpoint of what it was like for the author to accept a dog into his or her life or how a dog may perceive life from a dog’s point of view. The writing assignments based on these books were interesting and challenging and allowed each student to examine the authors’ themes of dogs existing in a human society.”

For the campus dog show faculty and administrators brought their dogs to participate. Parents of local students brought family pets and representatives from Northampton County SPCA, Lehigh Valley K9 Therapy, and First State Greyhound Rescue brought dogs and discussed their respective organizations.

VAST courses are writing-intensive interdisciplinary classes that incorporate approaches from the natural and social sciences, humanities, and/or arts in a fundamental way. Each course examines a topic, problem, or issue sufficiently large and complex that there is more than one way needed to look at it. The program’s goal is to help students see and understand science as a functioning part of their daily social world.