Animal Ethics and Aesthetics of Attention: Teaching Resource

This teaching resource was developed for a 3-day interdisciplinary summer school in human-animal studies for Master's and PhD students (humanities and social sciences). It is based on the premise that animal ethics is best understood as a genuinely interdisciplinary form of inquiry. While discussions in animal ethics risk appearing divided between conceptually oriented philosophical approaches and perspectives that emphasize aesthetics – encompassing literature, film, visual culture, or everyday practices of care as sources of ethical insight – the summer school was designed to bring these perspectives into dialogue rather than treat them as competing paradigms. Attention served as the thematic and methodological point of convergence. As both a philosophical and experiential phenomenon, attention, as theorized by Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil, invites exploration across disciplinary boundaries and provides a common framework for examining ethical relations between humans and other animals. The resource consists of a reading list and a structured preparation guide including learning outcomes, a structured preparatory task, and preparatory questions. It thus supports participants in engaging critically with the readings before the course and provides facilitators with a coherent framework for interdisciplinary discussion. Although originally designed for an intensive graduate summer school, the materials can readily be adapted for Master's seminars, doctoral courses, reading groups, and interdisciplinary teaching in Animal Studies, animal ethics, environmental humanities, philosophy, literary studies, and related fields. The teaching resource also includes questions that can serve as the basis for animal-themed city walks and can be adapted for use in any city.