Spring 2025 Women's Studies BC4325 section 001

EMBODIMENT AND BODILY DIFFERENCE

EMBODIMENT & BODILY DIFFE

Call Number 00035
Day & Time
Location
F 1:10pm-3:00pm
To be announced
Points 4
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Margot L Kotler
Type SEMINAR
Course Description

At once material and symbolic, our bodies exist at the intersection of multiple competing discourses, including the juridical, the techno-scientific, and the biopolitical. In this course, we will draw upon a variety of critical interdisciplinary literatures—including feminist and queer studies, science and technology studies, and disability studies—to consider some of the ways in which the body is constituted by such discourses, and itself serves as the substratum for social relations. Among the key questions we will consider are the following: What is natural about the body? How are distinctions made between presumptively normal and pathological bodies, and between psychic and somatic experiences?  How do historical and political-economic forces shape the perception and meaning of bodily difference? And most crucially: how do bodies that are multiply constituted by competing logics of gender, race, nation, and ability offer up resistance to these and other categorizations?

Web Site Vergil
Department Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
Enrollment 20 students (20 max) as of 11:06AM Thursday, December 5, 2024
Status Full
Subject Women's Studies
Number BC4325
Section 001
Division Barnard College
Section key 20251WMST4325X001