course description
How are bodies in the world?
How is the world in bodies?
Building from these deceptively simple questions, ours will be an interdisciplinary reading seminar on how bodies (mostly human, but sometimes non/human) are made and remade in and through their environments and via their relationships to the material world. Privileging porosity as a rubric, we consider the ever-permeable boundaries between bodies and the other beings (be they viral, chemical, pharmaceutical or otherwise) with which they become entangled. Alongside the monographs under study, we will tackle article-length engagements with theories of biopower/biopolitics, new feminist/queer materialisms, and critical science studies. Further, a key aim of this course is to provide students the opportunity to hone some of the most important skills we have in our toolbox as academics, relative to our teaching, our public voice/s as critics, and to our own research.