3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course examines the scientific and cultural history of human skin in the United States. As a surface, a boundary, and a text to be “read” and “written” upon, how has skin been made meaningful? How do metaphors and imagery—like skin as protector, as entrance and exit, as a container for individual identity—inform medical studies of skin? And how does medical research shape how skin shows up in literature, film, art, and politics? Readings will focus on the role of skin in representations of racial perception, health, disease, and beauty, and our discussions will ask how skin has become such an important object for defining ‘humanness’ in the U.S. From dermatological experiments on the enslaved and imprisoned, to environmental pollution, Black feminist sci-fi, pore-erasing creams, and shape-shifting superheroes, this course moves across time and media to peel back the many meanings of skin.