UWS 44A — Our Bodies, Our Selves

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This course introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Descartes’ well-known “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) expresses an equivalency between the mind and the self: who we are is regarded as inextricable from, even identical to, how or what we think. This connection between the mind and the self extends to writing, where literature is often seen as an expression of our thoughts and, therefore, ourselves. Yet, writing is also an action performed by a body. So, what does it mean to write while having a body or about having a body-- particularly a body that is disabled? In this course, we will study texts by disabled authors such as poetry from Jillian Weise and Ilya Kaminsky, essays by Leslie Jamison and Michel de Montaigne, and films such as Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and Tom McCarthy’s Up (2009). Through these works, we will consider the vexed intersections of body and mind, thought and action to explore issues such as societal attitudes about disability, the social and medical models of disability, representations of disability in culture and literature, and conceptions of the self and the other.
Nicole Adams

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