CMCL-C 619 Feminism and Rhetorical Theory
(Topic: On Bodies)
Class Number: 25733

M, 9:30 AM-12:00 PM, Location: TBA

Meets with CULS-C 701 and AMST-G 620
Open to Graduates Only!

Instructor: Phaedra C. Pezzullo
E-Mail: pezzullo@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 206
Phone: 855-2106
Instructor’s Website: http://www.indiana.edu/~envtrhet

We cannot take for granted that people know what we mean when we
talk about “the body.”  For some, the body evokes experiences of
illness, pain, shame, or oppression.  For others, the body seduces
us to indulge in fantasies of desire, love, pleasure, or
resistance.  For most, the body moves us in different ways depending
on the context and the manner in which the body is presented,
challenged, and/or celebrated.  Bodies—our bodies, the bodies that
surround us, the bodies that haunt us, the bodies that inspire us—
are both banal and extraordinary, part of our everyday lives and
part of spectacular events, instrumental and poetic.  Bodies enable
and limit action.  Bodies carry weight.

Given the simultaneous ambiguity and necessity of the body, it is
perhaps unsurprising that corporeality—that which involves bodies,
carnal life, and physical matters—is a topic which continues to gain
increased attention throughout the academy, particularly after too
many centuries during which academics felt compelled to deride,
ignore, and silence the body.  Grounded in a rhetorical perspective,
this course aims to engage an interdisciplinary range of critical
work about corporeality.  Although we will begin by recalling some
of the more powerful legacies about the body in western culture, we
will dedicate most of this graduate seminar to exemplary
contemporary engagements with the political, cultural, and
epistemological questions evoked by corporeality.

Likely Required Reading List:


* Debra Hawhee (2004) Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient
Greece

* Mary Douglas (1966)  Purity & Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of
Pollution & Taboo

* Frantz Fanon (1967/1991)  Black Skin, White Masks

* Michel Foucault (1977) Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the
Prison

* Audre Lorde (1980/1997)  The Cancer Journals: Special Edition

* Elaine Scarry (1985) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of
the World.

* Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989) Woman, Native, Other: Writing
Postcoloniality and Feminism

* Judith Butler (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity

* Donna Haraway (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention
of Nature

* Rosa Ainley, ed. (1998) New Frontiers of Space, Bodies and Gender

* Susan Bordo (2000) The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and
Private

* E-Reserves (Plato, Descartes, Marx, D. Conquergood, L. Williams,
M. Russo, & W. I. Miller, Carolyn Marvin)

Likely course assignments:

* Engaged, reflexive, and informed seminar participation

* Critical essay on the corporeality as a rhetorical attitude (4-6
pages)

* Critical autobiographical essay (4-6 pages)

* Final critical research paper on corporeality (10 pages + works
cited)