SOC 440 : Body and Embodiment

The body is at once material and symbolic and exists at the intersection of multiple discourses. It is an object of regulation and control, a site of meaning creation, the location of contentious political struggle, a place where power operates, and situated within contextual time, space and place. In this seminar, we will draw on interdisciplinary sources and use a range of theoretical traditions to consider ways in which the body is constituted by these discourses.

Body and embodiment studies encourage and enhance theory, research, and scholarship on a wide range of embodied dynamics.  These “body dynamics” are understood through micro and macro sociological analysis of the political, social and individual bodies. Themes and topics included are: human and non-human bodies, bioethics, morphology, anatomy, body fluids, biotechnology, genetics; but also theories of embodiment, virtual bodies, productivity of bodies, changing bodies, bodies and inequality, bodily meanings, bodies and identity, the natural environment and bodies, deviant bodies, abjection, and more.

How are we situated to the body? What is a subject, object or abject? How are distinctions made between the normal and pathological? Are bodies subordinate to the mind? How are bodies commodified? How are bodies categorized and constituted by discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, ableism, and more?