Embodiment Theory Course
Readings List
Week 1 Knowing One's Embodied Self
Clothesline By Roberta Cantow (Buffalo Rose Production 1981) 32 minutes http://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=307
Week 2 Movement in Cultural Context
Sklar, Deidre. “Can Bodylore be Brought to its Senses?” Journal of American Folklore, Bodylore Issue. Ed. Barbara Babcock and Katherine Young, 107(423), 1994: 9-22.
Sklar, Deidre. "The Footfall of Words: A Reverie on Walking with Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe," Journal of American Folklore 118 (467), 2005:9-20 (manuscript version).
Stern, Daniel N. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1985: 46-61.
Blakeslee, Sandra. "Cells that Read Minds," NY Times, January 10, 2006.
Optional
Fronsdal, Gil. "The Body at the Center," The Issue at Hand: Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice, 2001. http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/imc-iah.html
Week 3 The Argument for Awareness
Leder, Drew. "The Ecstatic Body," The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990: 11-35.
Lewis, J. Lowell. "Genre and Embodiment: From Brazilian Capoeira to the Ethnology of Human Movement," Cultural Anthropology, 10(2), 1995: 221-243.
Optional:
Depraz, Natalie, Francisco J. Varela and Pierre Vermesch. "The Gesture of Awareness: An Account of its Structural Dynamics." In Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness, Amsterdam: Benjamin Publishers, 1999.
Leder, Drew. "Flesh and Blood: A Proposed Supplement to Merleau-Ponty," Human Studies 13, 1990: 209-219
Week 4 Bodies in Pain
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. NY: Oxford University Press, 1985: 3-23.
Schieffelin, Edward E. "Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality, " American Ethnologist, Vol. 12, No 4, 1985: 707-722.
Optional:
Feld Steven. “Aesthetics and Synesthesia in Kaluli Ceremonial Dance,” UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology 14, 1990: 1-16.
Week 5 The Ritual Body
Lex, Barbara. "The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance.” In The Spectrum of Ritual. A Biogenetic Structural Analysis. Ed. Eugene G. D’Aquili, Charles D. Laughlin, Jr., and John McManus. NN: Columbia University Press, 1979: 117-152.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969: 94-7; 106-111; 131-133.
Optional:
Rappaport, Roy. “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual" In Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1979.
**[Fascinating treatment combining semiotic and phenomenological ideas, he declares that the effectiveness of religious ritual depends on the combination of liturgical statements and embodied presence.] **
Week 6 The "Habitus"
Mauss, Marcel. "Body Techniques," Sociology and Psychology: Essays by Marcel Mauss: London & Boston: Routledge and K. Paul, 1979: 97-123.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977: chap 1.
Week 7 Performing Gender
Butler , Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory," Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4., 1988: 519-531
½ the class read:
Wacquant, Loic J.D. "The Pugilistic Point of View: How Boxers Think and Feel about Their Trade," Theory and Society, Vol. 24, No. 4, 1995: 489-535.
and ½ the class read:
Gere, David. "29 Effeminate Gestures: Choreographer Joe Goode and the Heroism of Effeminacy." In Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage. Ed. Jane Desmond. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001:349-381.
Recommended:
Goffman, Irving. "Performances," The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp17-76.
Young, Iris Marion. “Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality.” Human Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 1980, pp. 137–156.
Week 8 Cultivating the Body
Foucault, Michel. "Docile Bodies," Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage/Random House, 1977: 135-169.
Elias, Norbert. "On Medieval Manners," The History of Manners Vol. 1. NY: Pantheon, 1978: 60-69.
Berger, John. “The Suit and the Photograph,” About Looking. NY: Pantheon Books, 1980: 27-36.
Week 9 Semiotics of Sensation
Howes, David. "Introduction: To Summon All the Senses," The Variety of Sensory Experience. A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Ed. David Howes and Constance Classen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991: 3-21.
Howes, David. "Sensorial Anthropology," The Variety of Sensory Experience. A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Ed. David Howes and Constance Classen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991: 167-191.
Bull, Cynthia Cohen. “Sense, Meaning, and Perception in Three Dance Cultures,” Meaning in Motion. New Cultural Studies of Dance. Ed. Jane Desmond. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997: 269-288.
Optional:
Efron, David. Gesture, Race and Culture. A tentative study of some of the spatio-temporal and “linguistic” aspects of the gestural behavior of eastern Jews and southern Italians in New York City, living under similar as well as different environmental conditions, 1941. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1972.
Week 10 Embodiment vs. the Body
Csordas, Thomas. "Embodiment and Cultural Phenomenology." In: Perspectives on Embodiment. Ed. Gail Weiss & Honi Fern Faber. NY & London: Routledge, 1999: 143- 162.
Bordo, Susan. "Reading the Slender Body." In Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998: 291-304.
Becker, Ann. "Nurturing and Negligence: Working on Others' Bodies in Fiji." In Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Ed. Thomas J. Csordas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994: 100-115.
Optional:
Csordas, Thomas J. “Somatic Modes of Attention,” Cultural Anthropology v. 8 (2), May 1993: 135-156.
Csordas, Thomas J. “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology,” Ethos 18(1), March, 1990: 5-47.
Week 11 The Medical Body
Young, Katherine. "Still Life with Corpse: Management of the Grotesque Body in Medicine." In Bodylore. Ed. Katherine Young. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993: 111-133.
Martin, Emily. "Talking Back to Neuro-Reductionism." In Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory. Ed. Helen Thomas & Jamilah Ahmed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004: 190-211.
Optional:
Rappaport, Roy A., 1979 “On Cognized Models,” Ecology, Meaning, and Religon. Berkely: North Atlantic Books: 97-144.
Week 12 Student presentations
Week 13 (If needed) Student presentations