3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course examines theories and experiences of embodiment, sexuality, and bodily difference in contemporary American culture, focusing on understandings, experiences, misconceptions, and marginalizations. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p> Drawing on feminist-informed gender, fat, disability, and critical race studies, the course introduces phenomenological, poststructuralist, and new materialist perspectives on the body, and interrogates the implications of diverse embodiments for human subjectivity and social life. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p> Myths and misconceptions of differences that circulate throughout popular and professional cultures, and inform public policies and everyday practices are analyzed. Course readings and audio/visual texts emphasize the problematics of normalcy across the life span and among diverse populations, and reflect on issues of sexual experience, gender, body size, disability and difference, illness and disease, aging and racialized bodies, and sexual variance. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p> Our bodies and the scrutiny they are under in American culture inform so much of our lived experience. Drawing on a wide range of texts we will examine the scope of sexuality and embodiment in this critical moment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>