ANTH3080 — Bodies and Culture
The human body is simultaneously one of the most ordinary, commonplace aspects of daily life and a powerful cultural artifact created and co-created on a daily basis. Humans across cultures “construct” their bodies in very specific ways: to display specific messages, to mark their gender identities, and to conform to or resist social norms. Tattooed and pierced bodies, pregnant and laboring bodies, trans bodies, fashionable bodies, even dead bodies all tell detailed stories about contemporary culture. It’s up to us to read the body as a social text and translate those stories. It’s also up to us to attend to and reflect on how we experience our own embodiment. prereq: minimum 30 credits