Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry

4 units

One of the most contested subjects of analysis has been and continues to be the human body and its lived experience. Bodies are cultural, political, economic, medical, literary, and historical; they are gendered, and sometimes even individual and personal. As the academy works to accommodate the body in its theoretical frameworks and is inspired by the body to ask new questions, real bodies continue to live out their experiences, resulting in a dynamic, exciting field of inquiry. This seminar is designed to explore the major themes and disciplinary areas concerned with understanding the human body as a lens for analyzing culture, society, and art-visual and literary-as well as science, religion, and politics. Our primary focus will be on theories of the body and bodily experience from antiquity to the present in Europe and North America, but we will also investigate the tensions between theory and representation of the body in other parts of the world. The body is a hotly contested subject precisely because of its intensely personal importance, and this course will navigate the disputed body as much as the theorized body. Our major source materials will include recent scholarly monographs from history, cultural studies, literary and feminist theory, as well as several works of fiction, art, and film.