Sylabus
A full course syllabus will be uploaded at the beginning of the semester. Course aims:
1. To develop a critical appreciation of bodies as relational, active, material and discursive
2. To identify different frameworks of body scholarship, what they highlight and exclude
3. To generate reflection on and responsibility for the bodies we help to produce in research and activism
4. To foster teamwork, collaboration and peer-assessment
5. To advance students’ English in oral and written expression (NB: class discussions in small groups can also be held in Czech). Thematic foci include: Whose Bodies Matter? Introduction to Gender and the Body. Body Performances Affective Economies Body Transformations and Body Integrity
Anotace
With the so-called refugee crisis, sexed and racialized bodies are currently on the forefront of politics, prompting fear, hostility, and boundary drawings but also hospitality, generosity and new openings. This course introduces students to feminist scholarship on the body. We will explore the place of the body in feminist scholarship and activism. Specifically we examine
• What methods and frameworks are used to understand the agency of bodily materiality and its relations to cultural discourses and meanings?
• How do bodies get sexed and gendered?
• How can we capture the relation of bodies to particular environments, and focus not only on constraints but also unexpected potentialities of lived bodies?
• What is the importance of biological understandings for feminist scholarship of the body?
• How do we evaluate bodily transformations (e.g. modifications through surgery) and ‘bodily integrity’ if bodies are always relationally constituted?
Throughout the course we will also reflect on how we as researchers are implicated in particular body politics. Here, the course introduces students to the method of memory work where students produce and collectively work with autobiographical memories of embodied experience. What orientations and affects are produced in this work, and how might memories be re-enacted differently?
A full course syllabus and the required readings will be uploaded at the beginning of the semester. Please note that while the class is taught in English, discussions in small groups can also be held in Czech.