Abstract
This essay demonstrates the ways in which one assignment, the creation of a class bestiary, fulfills the course outcomes of a first‐year seminar course introducing students to reading and writing in the humanities. Evolving from the critical field of monster theory, the assignment crumples the timeline between the medieval and the modern in four distinct ways: it responds to the anxieties of identity and definitions of the human by exploring questions of hybridity; it centers concerns about nature and the environment; it opens conversations about race and stereotypes through animal imagery; and it considers the role of technology and classification in shaping the future. The assignment reveals that student fears for the future, not merely of the individual, but of the human species and even the planet itself need to be addressed more deliberately in first‐year courses and suggests methods for revising the course to help students articulate and respond to the anxieties of the twenty‐first century, even as they look back and contemplate their connections with the past.
