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• College of Social Sciences and International Studies

Postgraduate Module Descriptor

ANTM112: Animals and Religion

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

– What is Religion? What’s it got to do with animals? (module description, assignment description, the problem of using ‘religion’ as a concept and the peculiar role of Protestantism).

– Prehistoric and Oral Traditions (archaeology and anthropology, shamanism, animism, totemism, appeasement, Australian dream time, shifting boundaries).

- Early History and ‘civilisation’ (mythology, farming, structural origins, economics, domestication, classical literature).

- The Indian Subcontinent (The variety of ‘Hindu’ traditions, reincarnation and animal sacredness, asceticism, Jainism and Buddhism).

- East Asia (Dao vs social order, pre-Han traditions, Shinto and syncretism).

- Abraham (The origins of Jewish traditions and the emergence of Christianity and Islam, world order and hierarchy, biblical vegetarianism, stewardship).

- A Bad Rap (Christianity in the middle ages, was it all bad? Inhuman daemons and witches, angels, St Francis, Protestant purity and property).

 - Enlightenment, Science and Machines (Descartes’ legacy, Human as an animal, a return to philosophy, big economics, global mixing).

 - New Age, Vegetarians and Animal Rights (full circle – world religions and neo-shamanism, animals as sentient, anthropomorphism).

- Death, burial and other themes (drawing it together, picking out common themes from disparate traditions).

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

How this Module is Assessed

In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.

Formative Assessment

A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.

Summative Assessment

A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.

...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.

Re-assessment

Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.

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