Contact Us

The Honors College

Guthrie House

1200 Ivinson St.

Laramie, WY 82070

Phone: 307-766-4110

Fax: 307-766-4298

Email: honors@uwyo.edu

Find us on Instagram (Link opens a new window)Find us on LinkedIn (Link opens a new window)

Kate Northrop

Kate Northrop grew up in humid Pennsylvania and she still appreciates, every summer day in Laramie, the glorious weather here.  She received her BA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA in Creative Writing / Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop.  Her recent full-length poetry collections are Things Are Disappearing Here (a New York Times Book Review Editors Choice) and Clean, both from Persea Books.   She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, the Jeanette Haien Ballard Award, the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Award, the Paumanock Award, the C & R Press Summer Tide Pool award.  This past spring she received an Ellbogen Award for Meritorious Teaching.

 

Clay Fellow | Honors Course

Kate Northrup in a landscape

HP 3153: Writing Animals
Instructor: Kate Northrup
Modality: 
Traditional
Honors College Attributes: 
Upper-division elective
USP attributes: (H) Human Culture
A&S attributes: none

Our worlds are not the only worlds. We live with and beside the non-human animals: pronghorn, Swainson’s hawks, lap dogs, mountain lions straying through town, pine beetles, Mourning Cloaks, drowned kittens, nighthawks overhead, raccoons in the kitchen, Mountain Whitefish.  How do we sound these worlds?  And why? To what ends?  Writers have long looked to and imagined the non-human, but how do we do that?  How do we write (and think) that which we name but may not be able to fully know?  In this course we will consider (through class discussion of assigned readings, independent research, writing exercises and semester-long creative writing projects) ways of thinking / representing non-human animals and our relationships with them. In this course, we will approach and mind those relationships.

We will be considering a range of creative work: stories, poems, essays, short videos, dramatic monologues, paintings, photographs.  Of each creative piece we will discuss the questions that we read as driving the piece, and the questions the piece raises for us.  It’s not possible for me to know our questions now, ahead of time, but some possible questions, or rather, some of my own questions:  How do we look at non-human animals?  How are we looked at?  How do non-human animal and human animal lives intersect?  What boundaries have been erected historically and why, to what end?  How are our lives shaped by non-human animals?  How are non-human animals lives shaped?  What responsibilities do humans have?  What causes for joy, what concerns?

 
Contact Us

The Honors College

Guthrie House

1200 Ivinson St.

Laramie, WY 82070

Phone: 307-766-4110

Fax: 307-766-4298

Email: honors@uwyo.edu

Find us on Instagram (Link opens a new window)Find us on LinkedIn (Link opens a new window)