ABSTRACT This article explores how literary study engages readers’ moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of moral perception and imagination in literary study. Reading with others, the article contends, can involve an ethic focused on the good of knowing one’s ways of seeing make a difference (...) to others. The article defends social practices of reading by arguing they can broaden and complicate students’ moral perception and imagination by making students accountable to texts, one another, and the wider world. (shrink)

This article explores the philosopher Alice Crary’s ideas about ethics, literature, and nonhuman animals. Through studying certain works of literature, Crary writes, readers can see aspects of animals’ moral characteristics that are difficult to perceive outside of literary study. To illustrate and extend Crary’s argument, the article presents a reading of John Steinbeck’s (1937/1993) Of Mice and Men, a novella that is taught frequently in secondary schools and that has been re-evaluated by critics as offering insights into social inequality and (...) animal welfare. Drawing upon and adapting Crary’s work, which does not address questions of pedagogy, the article describes forms of instruction that enable students reading Of Mice and Men and other works of literature to explore the moral lives of animals. Thus, a key contribution of this project is its explanation of how educators can use philosophy to open pedagogy to new ways of seeing and assessing animals’ moral characteristics. (shrink)