“Is This How I Express That Love?”: How Graduates of Zoological Education Experience Learning About Animals

The exploitation of animals in the Canadian economy results in widespread violence against animals and against marginalized people worldwide. This exploitation is normalized and reinforced by a strong influence of the Canadian economy on higher educational institutions that teach students to justify and participate in this violence. In this thesis, I investigate the process of education at one Canadian university to gain insight into how students experience this landscape and describe their educations in their own words. I use interpretive, qualitative interviews and a Listening Guide analysis to interpret perspectives from three graduates from similar degrees at the same Canadian university. I found that students negotiate challenging emotional processes and settings alongside considerations of their own employment and that this process involves emotional distancing and erasing the experiences of animals. I centrally reflect on the emotional and economic elements of zoological education through themes of emotion, objectification, work, and contradiction. My findings contribute to scholarly discussions by examining perspectives from a specific Canadian context and by highlighting the emotional depths of the conflicting and contradictory experiences of students who pursue an education and work with animals.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. Critical Sociology

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Faculty of Social Sciences

Department dc:contributor.department

Department of Sociology

Grantor dc:publisher

Brock University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Hurst, Patricia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Corman, Lauren

• zoology
• critical animal studies
• student voice
• anthropocentrism
• feminist methodology

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10464/20427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:brocku.scholaris.ca:10464/20427