Introducing the IU seminar
Hi, all. I wanted to offer a bit more background on who showed up in the IU seminar today and a bit about what we talked about. The seminar has 17 students (currently) from Gender Studies, Applied Health Sciences, Folklore, Art History, and Communication and Culture. We are cross-listed with American Studies and Cultural Studies. At IU, Communication & Culture is a multi-disciplinary department, including Rhetoric & Public Culture, Film & Media Studies, and Performance/Ethnography (Anthropology). Students expressed a range of interests, including but not limited to: pregnancy/birth; military/memorials; sports; technolog/new media/cyborgs; identity (esp., gendered, sexed and sexualized); and body image/fat.
Beyond introducing ourselves, I raised a few points that folks may or may not wish to discuss further on the blog. First, I assigned Debbie Hawhee's book for next week along with readings from Plato and Descartes. The goal is to emphasize that body studies is not "new or "trendy"; in fact, as long as there have been academies, academics have studied bodies. So, whereas Plato and Descartes' writings represent the body/soul and body/mind splits that long have been perpetuated by some academics, Debbie's book provides a wonderful argument using historical evidence that the bodily arts long have been vital to rigorous scholarship and thinking (even for Plato himself). Looking at the U of I syllabus, I see all of you also will be discussing what a rhetorical approach to bodies might entail. Acknowledging the body is not new to the academy seems important not only to re-imagining what we have been taught about what it has meant to be an academic historically, but also what it could mean or become. Questions to consider: what myths remain about athletic bodies? about academic bodies? Who gains and who loses out when we perceive athletic and academic bodies in a rigid binary (opposing each other)? And what difference does a rhetorical approach to sports--or bodies--make? Is Grosz's (U of I reading) approach a rhetorical one, even if she might not claim it as such?
Beyond introducing ourselves, I raised a few points that folks may or may not wish to discuss further on the blog. First, I assigned Debbie Hawhee's book for next week along with readings from Plato and Descartes. The goal is to emphasize that body studies is not "new or "trendy"; in fact, as long as there have been academies, academics have studied bodies. So, whereas Plato and Descartes' writings represent the body/soul and body/mind splits that long have been perpetuated by some academics, Debbie's book provides a wonderful argument using historical evidence that the bodily arts long have been vital to rigorous scholarship and thinking (even for Plato himself). Looking at the U of I syllabus, I see all of you also will be discussing what a rhetorical approach to bodies might entail. Acknowledging the body is not new to the academy seems important not only to re-imagining what we have been taught about what it has meant to be an academic historically, but also what it could mean or become. Questions to consider: what myths remain about athletic bodies? about academic bodies? Who gains and who loses out when we perceive athletic and academic bodies in a rigid binary (opposing each other)? And what difference does a rhetorical approach to sports--or bodies--make? Is Grosz's (U of I reading) approach a rhetorical one, even if she might not claim it as such?
posted by Phaedra C. Pezzullo at 10:38 AM
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