FOLK 725 301 Bodylore

M. Hufford
Seminar: Wednesday 1:00-3:00
Contact: mhufford@sas.upenn.edu

Bodylore, a term coined in the late 1980s by folklorist Katharine Young, names an emerging subfield focused on the bodys role in the making of social meanings. In this seminar, we'll consider the body as it is theorized by Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Douglas, Harvey, Stewart, Young, and others, and we'll turn to selected ethnographic case studies to explore problems of embodiment. How does the body enact the discourses that constitute it? How do our ways of imagining and interpreting the body bear on our ways of ordering the social and natural world? How is the bodys dual status as both mode and object of knowing (Stewart) negotiated in ethnographic and scientific practice? How might a more humanistic ethnography undo and displace the dualisms of mind and body, body and self, and perhaps even return us to the body as a measure of all things (Harvey)? Work for the course will include in-class presentations, participation in electronic and face-to-face discussion about the readings, and a final paper.

 
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