This course introduces students to basic questions about 1) how our bodies are subject to multiple kinds of power dynamics 2) the ways in which we move through the world in these bodies navigate, subvert, reinforce, and interfere in these dynamics and 3) what radical change/possibilities may be through physical intervention. We will examine these questions through attention to the spheres of experimental and social performance, sports, everyday activity/interpersonal exchange, and protest movements. We will read theorists from disciplines including history of power and knowledge; dance and performance studies; postcolonial studies/critical theory; and more. This course will act as a segue into Philosophies of the Body P2 thinking about alternative global traditions of thinking about the body and its possibilities for those who choose to take both.

Nakedness of Being is an experiential and experimental performance course taught by Eiko Otake, a New York-based movement artist. This course combines Eiko’s embodied creative practice with the study of postwar Japanese arts. Through the study of movement, readings, videos, and films we will learn that space/time is not a white canvas that stands alone and empty. Here and now are continuous parts of a larger geography (space) and history (time) and as such are dense with memories, shadows, and possibilities. We will see art works and films from postwar Japan as examples of artistic representations of despair and perseverance. What is it to forget, remember, mourn, and pray? How do we transcend violence and loss? How does being or becoming a mover or dancer affect our emotional rigor, seeing/learning, and creativity? These are some of the many questions that we will explore. This is not a dance class, nor is it geared toward performers. We will learn some movement together, but the course encourages students to think about movement as a method of accessing human experiences and building knowledge, a way to explore sensations, thoughts, and reactions to a particular space.

This course brings together practices in creative writing and movement to deepen students’ capacities for creative engagement and expression. Structured, sequenced movement and creative writing exercises will guide students’ work in these creative forms; previous experience in either discipline—while welcome—is not required.

Comparative (and connected) exploration of philosophies of the body. In the west, we have inherited a model of the body as object, opposite to the mind - reinforced by a variety of everyday discourses including medical and health discourses as well as those around beauty, capability, and culpability. While this course will historicize continental European theories of mind-body duality, we will dive into specific other philosophical traditions – embodied as well as textual – which offer very different models for the thinking-feeling-subjective body, with their own complexities and critical possibilities. We will address bodies (in motion), perception/cognition, and power (variously defined). Ultimately, these various approaches force us to question what it means to even talk about “a body”.

This class looks at a series of popular dance and music phenomena coming from Asian and African worlds alongside experimental artists working primarily with movement and media. We see how these phenomena and artists' works circulate while defining specific politics and histories rooted in place and sometimes in coalition or convergence across place- from batik, S. Asian cinema, Afrobeats to K-pop, to experimental media artists and more. We will contextualize precolonial circulations to Bandung Era alliances to contemporary neoliberal economic relations to ask how these dynamics decenter Eurocentric notions of diaspora, the non-west, and global politics. Explore questions of place, identity, connected histories, and decolonial frameworks through bodily and media politics and a range of viewings, readings, and workshops.

An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of arts and health, students will engage in daily movement explorations and discussions as well as participate in on-site creative workshops with health professionals. The principles of this arts & health practice will be further explored as they relate to other disciplines such as education, economics, psychology and the health sciences. As a final project, students will create a personal response to their investigations and experiences in an arts discipline of their choosing (dance/movement, theatre, music, voice, visual art, writing.) This in-depth experience will also include a final critical reflection synthesizing their research, theoretical studies and creative work.