A group of Brown University faculty has received $175,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through its prestigious Sawyer Seminars program, which supports comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments. Brown’s year-long program, “Animal Magnetism: The Emotional Ecology of Animals and Humans,” will investigate the emotional and social journeys of pets from multiple vantage points — anthropological, archaeological, artistic, biological, ecological, ethical, ethological, historical, literary, and philosophical — with an emphasis on comparing investigations from the record of early civilizations to the interests and concerns of the modern period. It will be led by the co-directors of Brown’s Program in Early Cultures — Susan Alcock, John Bodel, and Stephen Houston — throughout the 2012-2013 academic year. A small number of universities worldwide are invited to compete for the Sawyer Seminar. This is the first time Brown University will host this program.