The Body in Feminist Theory and Practice
This course familiarizes students with conceptual and theoretical approaches to analyzing the body, embodiment, and the embodied subject through its focus on the place of the corporeal in various interdisciplinary contexts (e.g., queer theory, visual studies, poststructuralist theory, affect theory, postcolonial studies). In approaching these thematics, the course will engage with a variety of different media, including literature, film, performance, and art. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on considerations of the body as a surface of inscription, as an object of representation, as the location of perception, as a site of affect, as a performative agent, and as a site of resistance. With a particular focus on queer and trans sexualities and genders, the course will be especially attuned to problematizing and destabilizing concepts of normality and abnormality. In addition, methodological concerns of doing research on the body from a feminist and queer critical perspective will be outlined through discussions and interrogations of the ways in which our own embodiment as researchers impinges on the work we do.
This course familiarizes students with conceptual and theoretical approaches to analyzing the body, embodiment, and the embodied subject through its focus on the place of the corporeal in various interdisciplinary contexts (e.g., queer theory, visual studies, poststructuralist theory, affect theory, postcolonial studies). In approaching these thematics, the course will engage with a variety of different media, including literature, film, performance, and art. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on considerations of the body as a surface of inscription, as an object of representation, as the location of perception, as a site of affect, as a performative agent, and as a site of resistance. With a particular focus on queer and trans sexualities and genders, the course will be especially attuned to problematizing and destabilizing concepts of normality and abnormality. In addition, methodological concerns of doing research on the body from a feminist and queer critical perspective will be outlined through discussions and interrogations of the ways in which our own embodiment as researchers impinges on the work we do.
- Dates: April – June 2020
- Location: NOG – Utrecht University
- Credits: 5 ECTS (credits will only be awarded after an accepted written paper. Students not requiring any credits will receive a certificate of attendance)