Communication Through Literature Winter 2016: Day Five: Embodied Learning

Embodiment and Marginalized "Others" - Who Gets to be a Rational, Objective Agent?

What is pedagogy? How does the author describe or define embodied pedagogy? What are some examples she gives?
What is a socially-constituted body? How do social norms, expectations, narratives and stereotypes shape the way that different bodies are treated?

How do social norms shape our bodies vis-a-vis 1.) the way we feel in our bodies? 2.) the way we feel about our bodies? 3.) the way society reads our bodies?
How are the differences between men’s relationship to their bodies versus women’s relationship to their bodies socially constituted? In other words, how do social norms shape the differences in the relationship between bodies and genders?
What about other cultural identities? Class? Race? Sexuality? How do social norms inscribe ways in which "othered" bodies are "read"?

How has the mind been placed above the body in a socially-constructed hierarchy?

"The notion of an ideal democratic subject presumes an autonomous, rational agent...The question of what a citizen should be has been with us since ancient Greece" (Holc, 1996).

Erin Willer, research on "compassionate love" embodied by health care professionals in treating women struggling with infertility and miscarriage: "Although several participants acknowledged that interpersonal distance may be necessary with some patients, virtually all of them rejected professional detachment as part of their care repertoires and in fact indicated that “such an approach was foreign to their personalities or their self-image as health-care professionals” (p. 355).