Take Me Apart: The Body As Myth Between Literature, Film, and Theory

Through various media such as novels, films, and performance art, together we will interrogate our primary question: what is a body? ‘The Body As Myth’ explores the work of artists and scholars across disciplinary fields that have discussed and dissected the concept of the body as an amalgamation of biological, sociocultural, psychological, and/or philosophical schemas rather than the pure instrument of Cartesian dualism. Topics that we will encounter over the course of the semester include horror and the tortured body, phenomenology, the libidinal self, race and the body, feeling and cinema, and more. This course has required asynchronous film screenings each week.