Embodiment: (Re)Defining the Human

Please note this course is for a GSAS Teaching Scholar

With the rise of climate change, technological advances, and an abundance of everyday existential crises, you might be wondering what it means to be human in 2023. In this course, we begin with the claim that in order to understand “human being” in a time of critical discourse regarding the Anthropocene, we must explore embodiment. Starting with Cartesian Dualism and its legacy, we will progress to contemporary critiques and move into speculative understandings of embodiment and its role in human being in religious studies, philosophy, literature, and anthropology. We will think about how we define what it means to be human, who exactly this “we” is who gets to do the defining, and what happens to us and our worlds when we forget about or attempt to overcome embodiment. This course has several interactive components and utilizes media such as podcasts, films, comics, and practical engagement in addition to a wide variety of academic reading assignments.