n. infantile pattern of suckle-swallow movement in which the tongue is placed between incisor teeth or between alveolar ridges during initial stage of swallowing (if persistent can lead to various dental abnormalities) v. [content removed due to Bush campaign to clean up the internet] n. act of nyah-nyah v. pursuing with relentless abandon the need to masticate and thrust the world into every bodily incarnation in order to transform it, via the act of salivation, into nutritive agency

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

"they'll hate you"


Pretty much a direct quote from three friends in a row. Hmmmm.

The topic: 208 pages in the coursebook I developed. And most of these pages were merely reduced to one page (from two). I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to pare.

BUT!

What a fucking cool collection of readings I've got going! So, the topic of my class is "Writing Around the Body," which I've avoided mentioning on d'blog because I once took a class on roughly the same topic... and it was the most traumatic class I've had in my life and I don't know, but I don't want to jinx myself by talking about it although it's a topic close to my palpating parts. Anyhow, back to the horrifying reading collection...

(please tell me what to cut)

Book Readings for the semester: Frankenstein, The Handmaid's Tale, Metamorphosis (in that order)

Coursebook Essays:

The Variable Body vs. The 'Perfect' Body
*Culture in the Mirror: Sociocultural Determinants of Body Image (historical overview)
*Some Simple Reflections on the Body (Valery)
*Fat (from The Anatomy of Melancholy, Shelley Jackson)

Body/ Soul Division
*Introduction to Philosophy of the Body (a run-down of Cartesian duality and some other thoughts)
*Disembodied Knowledge / Embodied Knowledge (from a book on Dance)
*Unready to Wear (Vonnegut)

Pain, Illness, Death
*The End of the Body (Perception of death in Indian culture)
*The Knife (creative nonfiction about surgery)

Religion & the Body
*Divine Image - Prison of Flesh: Perception of the Body in Ancient Gnosticism
*In Plato's Cave (essay on ethics of photography for our photo project)

Women & the Body
*Introduction to Body Work (brief discussion of women and gyms, makeup, etc)
*The Body in Postmodern and Feminist Anthropology (the quickest overview I could find)
*Sperm (Shelley Jackson short story again, really funny)

Gender, Sexuality, and the Body
*Body Talk: Revelation of Self and Body in Contemporary Strip Clubs
*The Social Evil, the Solitary Vice and Pouring Tea (about prostitution, masturbation, and tradition, hell yeah!)

Body Art
*The Tattoo Renaissance
*Beauty and Being: Aesthetics and Ontology in Yoruba Body Art

The Manipulated Body

*The Inanimate Incarnate (very short, about puppets, and we'll watch Being JM)

Other Visions
*The Body: The Daoists' Coat of Arms
*The Ghost in the Machine: Religious Healing and Representations of the Body in Japan

Re-Imag(in)ing the Body
*Mapping the Body (all pictures of body maps)

....

Don't they all sound wohhhhhhnderful?

My students are going to hate me.
Comments:
they wont hate you.
but I dont know about the handmaids tale....i remember everyone having a hard time reading that. (?) then having no clue how to discuss it-it is a very distant piece...but?
everything else i say cha-cha to and do a little twist
and do make them write...do do....
I like the re-imaging thing too...maybe some performance art or video art? they have excellent pieces on ways to document the body at the library
 
well, it's good to get one "they won't hate you" to add to the mix.

yeah, i agonized and agonized about the handmaid's tale, skimming it and re-reading parts - the odd thing is that i read it in high school and adored it. but it seemed pretty tough this time around, and longer than i remembered it. i wanted something else to fill the female/sexuality/manipulation, etc slot, but had a hard time coming up with anything. and i've ordered all the books from the store. so, i'm going to still have to go with it and see what comes. i might take exerpts?

i always cha-cha. with spin and a twist.

and they're gonna write their little hearts out - they have to keep a body journal/sketchbook on a particular aspect of the body they're obsessed with. plus essays.

i went to the library for films about body and didn't find too much... do you have any recommendations? some interesting ones were on reels, and only 4-5mins long and since it will take me about an hour to set each one up, reel-illiterate that i am, i am hoping to find dvd/video...

thanks, b, hope/wish i could talk to you soon
 
Dearest,
http://www.vdb.org/

the video data bank has a really really good collection. I recommend just going there and asking them about it or browsing the website. Its sooooo good for what you are talkign about. really you could show videos all the time...for each topic....
anyways its one of my fav places in chi.
i will write more soon.....
let me know what you think? or if you thought it was good
 
i will go and check them out.

oh, and i'm thinking more and more about dropping handmaid's tale and just spending more time on everything else...

hugs and talk soon babe
 
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