Taught in English. No prerequisites.
Crosslisted with Comparative Literature 01:195:378:01, Philosophy 01:730:378:01, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 01:988:378:01
Subversive Bodies, Bodily Subversions
This course explores the unruly, excessive, and ecstatic ways in which bodies are represented, fragmented, and transformed across literature, film, and theory. Rejecting the fantasy of the body as natural or whole, we will trace how embodiment is historically produced, culturally inscribed, and politically wounded. Our focus is on bodies that overflow their limits—elated, disciplined, damaged, or in revolt. Their examination will lead us to consider dismembered and partial bodies from Edgar Allan Poe to Bora Chung, revealing how bodily fragmentation exposes fractures within subjectivity and the edifice of social order. With the help of Nietzsche and Foucault, we will reflect on the body under siege—tortured, surveilled, or trained into docility. How does power write itself into the flesh? What are the ways in which pain speaks through the body’s lacerations? While the body is the site of an infinite vulnerability that witnesses the collision of power and signification, it is also capable of modes of resistance through symbolic excess, performance, and monstrous metamorphoses. What forms of outrageous embodiment can we imagine?
Taught in English.
Fulfills SAS Core Goals AHo, CCD-1.