COML 4704 - Written on the Body

(crosslisted) ASIAN 4407, FGSS 4607
(LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

A. Bachner.

Images of tattooed, inscribed, and marked bodies abound in popular media, from television series to blogs, from performance art to popular literature. When the body becomes a canvas or text, this raises crucial questions about the interactions between individual bodies, culture/s, and society/ies. In this course we will pay particular attention to the shifting meanings of body modification in different cultural, theoretical, and historical contexts. Course material will include texts, films, and artwork by Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Georges Didi-Huberman, Lalla Essaydi, Zhang Huan, Franz Kafka, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mirta Kupferminc, Christopher Nolan, Renata Salecl, Stelarc, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, Qiu Zhijie, and others, as well as television series, internet forums, and other popular culture formats.