Tails from a Semi-colorblind Aggie

      This week's readings truly explored the relationship between people and animals. From threats, to excuses to demonstrate literature skills, to representatives of human emotions, to finally dear companions, dogs have a very unique relationship with humans. Each article I read provided a deeper understanding to our modern views on dogs and how they came to be. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of our ever evolving opinion of these animals is the concept of souls introduced in  Ingrid H. Tague's Dead Pets: Satire and Sentiment in British Elegies and Epitaphs for Animals . The debate of whether dogs have souls or not, and if they would be involved in a sort of after-life as many humans believe in, continues to this day and includes many different perspectives.     The first thing I wish to address is the different concepts of death and what happens after from the human perspective. There's the idea that nothing occurs after death; this includes the...

      I have participated in multiple Honors courses prior to this once. So far, I have always had a positive experience. I was excited to register for this course since I love using literature to discover different viewpoints of the world. What I was not expecting, though, was the focus of this class. Never, in my entire life, did I think I would accidentally sign up for a class about dogs. And it turns out that that unexpected twist in my expectations turned out to be just what I needed.     One thing I have noticed about this class is that it just sucks you right in. The readings, the concepts, the discussions are all fascinating and difficult to try to stop thinking about. I often find myself connecting the ideas I've learned in this course to ever little thing in my life. For example, I often see people walking their dogs while I'm at Quidditch practice. I automatically start thinking about how that dog might represent their owner and what their intera...

     For my research project, I have decided to focus on dog symbolism in fiction chapter books. Specifically, I plan to research more about how dogs represent characters and vice versa. However, I am going through a different route than what you would think. Instead of studying texts where the dog is a main character, I plan to look at books where the dog is a minor character at best. I think that this will be a very interesting project as you don't often realize how much symbolism a dog can have when it's not the main focus of the story. I already have some chapter books in mind, though I need to start finding some research papers to provide some solid theories and examples other than my own,     I do know that this will be a difficult project. By using chapter books instead of picture books, I will have a lot more reading material to go over. And through studying the connection between the dog(s) and the character(s), I have to have a good understanding of th...

       In the Early Modern period, there was a shift in how dogs were used in art. Previously, dogs mainly represented evil acts or characteristics. Or even just evil dogs. During this time, though, artists really started to highlight the positive qualities of dogs. They were used to represent good human traits and experiences. It's interesting to not only note this change in focus, but to also think about why it occurred at this time. To be clear, this Early "Modern" period wasn't actually modern- the paintings we focus on in Simona Cohen's Dogs in the Religious Paintings of Tintoretto  and Patrik Reuterswärd's The Dog in the Humanist's Study  were actually based around the Renaissance time period. Perhaps the sudden flood of new ideas was what helped encourage this change in animal symbolism. Or perhaps it wasn't the 'new' ideas themselves, but the fact that people were starting to become more accepting of things they previously considered pa...

      Research on the middle ages is a giant compact group of both hypothesizes and speculations. There's a lot of evidence for what we do know about dogs and their relationship to people as viewed in middle age art. However, we can't actually know because we can't ever get the 'truest' form of evidence there is: a direct conversation with the artist. What we come up with makes sense, but it's difficult to agree with when we just don't know for sure. I think that's the hard part about researching humanity-related topics; we can learn a lot and come up with many theories, but in the end we can't truly come to know something like we can in multiple scientific fields. At the same time, though, this is also what makes studies like this so interesting. We can't ever know for sure, but that also means there's infinite opportunities for us to explore and play with since we don't have the limitations of a set answer.    Image Source: Wikimedia Co...