Introduction to Body Studies

This course places the human body at the centre of our everyday experience and approaches it from a wide range of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives, including feminist studies, gender studies, post-modernism, post-humanism, medical humanities, disability studies, visual culture, cultural theory and philosophy. The course is concerned with embodiment, (mis)representation, performance, (in)visibility and lived experience, the themes that cross over in an emerging interdisciplinary field of body studies. It invites students to rethink what it means to be and to have a body, and to reimagine the body's limits, boundaries and capacities from social, philosophical and design perspectives. The course will explore how the body informs design and making processes (through somatic senses, perceptual possibilities, and cultural and social understandings) and how designers and users engage with designs. We will also examine how media reshape our knowledge and interpretation of the body and how we perceive power, ideology and social and cultural processes. All the course sessions will focus on interdisciplinary perspectives and questions around the relationship between the body, identity, media and technology.   Credits Level: 8 Year taken: Year 2 Undergraduates SCQF Credits: 20