Please take special note of the time and days this class meets. Our bodies are us, but they are more than us, because they are also the medium of our interface with the larger world. Human creativity reflects our physical capacity to shape our material surroundings, and many forms of creative practice take human corporeality as their starting point. This course offers a range of conceptual and experiential tools for considering what it means that we are embodied beings. What kind of knowledge do bodies generate? What do cultural differences in how people understand and enact embodiment reveal about the social production of bodies and the limits of "nature" as a way of describing embodiment? What does an embodied theory have to tell us about the complexity and fluidity of identity, or structures of inequality and the operations of power? Rather than settling on single answers to such questions, we will think critically about the multiple ways scholars and creative practitioners explore the issues these questions raise. Students will engage with a range of theoretical and literary texts, performance, and media materials as well as frequently participating in group exercises that employ performance-based approaches to embodiment. We will look at variances of embodiment in a multicultural world and we will cover controversial subjects related to the intersections of nationality, race, ethnicity,gender, class, ability, sexuality, and gender identity/expression as a means to stimulate provocative thinking that will help to generate discussion. Together we will strive for an embodied as well as intellectual understanding of our theme. This is a course in which we will pay close attention to our bodies and the bodies around us.

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