Politics of the Body (231-0-1)
Instructors
Elvia Mendoza
Crowe Hall, Room 1144
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-430: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
What constitutes the body? How is it felt, experienced, and articulated? What insights does it provide on how power operates? These questions will drive our exploration into how the body is constructed, mediated, and negotiated through the critical lenses of race, gender, and sexuality across diverse contexts. As an inherently interdisciplinary course, we will draw from performance studies, literature, visual arts, gender and sexuality studies, critical race studies, and philosophy to gain a comprehensive understanding of the processes and ideologies that assign varied meanings and values to bodies. We will engage and dialogue with a wide range of knowledge productions encompassing performance, film, photography, novels, personal essays, and hybrid literary forms to develop a critical understanding of how the body is in a state of continuous formation. By putting these varied forms of intellectual thought into conversation with one another, we can discern the body as an archive and a site of resistance. This will lead us to a nuanced understanding of embodiment and embodied knowledge, challenging the traditional duality of mind and body.
Learning Objectives
After completing this course:
Students will gain a firm understanding of how racialized modalities of gender and sexuality shape the differential meanings attributed to bodies within structures of power.
Students will be able to articulate how the body is subjected to visual and discursive practices that normalize various forms of subjugation;
Students will cultivate a critical appreciation for how artists and scholars use different mediums to theorize, conceptualize, render legible, and contest oppressive tropes and systems of power. Moreover, students will understand how the body, individually and collectively, becomes a site of self-making.
Students will develop their critical thinking skills and forms of expression through writing, discussion, class presentations, and completing artistic assignments.
Class Materials (Required)
Mayra Santos-Febres, Sirena Selena: A Novel (book)
Reading assignments will be provided via Canvas and library reserves.
Class Attributes
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity