This seminar addresses animal ethics with particular attention to the discipline’s recent “political turn.” We will start with core contributions to animal ethics, and, in addition to examining their guiding assumptions, we will discuss the historical and political circumstances in which their authors were or are working. We will investigate considerations that have suggested to many animals-oriented ethicists and political theorists that animal ethics should not be treated as an area of study distinct from the study of politics, and we will explore efforts to give the field more real-world traction by reconceiving it as a distinctive critical theory, or as a distinctive strand of political philosophy, with ties to, say, ecofeminism, theories of racial capitalism, ecological Marxism, or theories of social reproduction. Throughout, we will foreground questions about the treatment of animals in particular settings with an eye to assessing possibilities for meaningful interventions, in the face of unfolding world-wide environmental catastrophe, and at a time when it is undeniable that the human use and devastation of animals, and their habitats, represent a threat to the continued existence not only of animals but of humans, and of a living earth. Seminar materials will be interdisciplinary, emphasizing work in ethics, social philosophy, and political philosophy and including not only material from ethology and history but also literary works and narrative and documentary film. Course readings will include, among others, writings of Cora Diamond, Sue Donaldson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lori Gruen, Linda Hogan, Dale Jamieson, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Claire Jean Kim, Syl Ko, Christine Korsgaard, Will Kymlicka, Peter Singer, and Dinesh Wadiwel.