Professor: Kate Mondloch and Anita Chari
4 credits
In this team-taught course, Professors Chari and Mondloch explore the body’s significance in everyday life and in social movements. We will combine critical analysis of writing on the subjective and political implications of bodily experience with perceptual exercises and embodiment practices that will help us attend more closely to how we perceive ourselves, other people, and the social worlds we inhabit.
Our readings and discussions will draw on interdisciplinary research from modernity to the present, including the fields of Political Theory, Visual Studies, Art History, Media Studies, Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, Queer Theory, Psychology, Contemplative Pedagogy, and Trauma Studies. Our “perception labs” will engage these intellectual theories through experiential practices such as slow looking, embodied writing, somatic awareness, and analyzing technologies of attention. These practices are designed to increase our awareness of how implicit and explicit bias and racism move through our bodies and thoughts, and to nurture a deeper comprehension of the intricate relationship between power dynamics and corporeal resistance.
Requirements Note: Students may register for this course under the HC 221H or HC 231H course number. The course number students register for will determine the CHC requirement the class fulfills. Students will not be able to change their mind at a later date.
- If you have taken or are currently enrolled in HC 221H: you must sign up for this class under HC 231H as you cannot repeat HC 221H
- If you have taken or are currently enrolled in HC 231H: you must sign up for this class under HC 221H as you cannot repeat HC 231H
- If you have taken neither HC 221H nor HC 231H: you may sign up for this class under either number. However, you will not be able to repeat the number you register for in the future (e.g., if you sign up under HC 221H you will not be able to take a different HC 221H class in a later term).
Please talk with your advisor if you have questions about which course number you should register for.