Athena Kirk, the Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow in the classics department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, received the 2012 Distinguished New Course Award from the Humane Society of the United States and the Animals and Society Institute. Dr. Kirk was honored for her course, “The Ancient Animal World,” which she developed for the Fall 2012 semester.
The panel of judges remarked, “This remarkable course moves between the classical literary and philosophical heritage and contemporary questions of engagement with animals, exposing students to ancient taxonomies and cultural attitudes while using service learning and site visit exercises to encourage reflections on human interactions with animals.”
Dr. Kirk, who joined the Washington and Lee faculty last fall, holds a Ph.D. in classics from the University of California at Berkeley.