The Craft of Writing

This course will examine the body as a location of power as well as a source of power. We will start the semester by questioning about how we think of the body and what we determine to be normative versus abnormal. Is the body a purely "natural"/biological organism? Is it a product of "culture"? How does technology of and on the body complicate the nature/culture divide? Considering the body as a site of investment or a target of power, the class will study texts by writers including Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Descartes, and Sophocles, to contemplate how and why the body is produced and/or constituted by power and discourse.