HMVK04117U IKK-Free subject: Art & Health: The Aesthetics of Pleasure & Pain

Volume 2025/2026
Education

Study board of Arts and Cultural Studies

Content

This course approaches the aesthetic nexus of pleasure and pain from diverse interdisciplinary theoretical fields including affect theory, gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, and the medical humanities, while drawing on analytical approaches in art history and visual culture, musicology, theatre and performance studies, and comparative literature in connection with the expertise of the course instructors. 

 

A central objective of this course is to confront normative constructions of “pleasure” and “pain” by foregrounding marginalized creative perspectives that reflect on the pleasure/pain continuum as a diverse physiological, emotional, cultural, and political experience in accordance with the inherent diversity of human embodiment and identity. We will thus examine the aesthetics of pleasure and pain in connection with diverse forms of artistic representation vis-à-vis the following topics:

 

  • The pathologization of pleasure and pain
  • Phenomenologies of disability, illness, trauma
  • The performative dynamics of hospital spaces
  • Aging, pain, and the “pleasure deficit”
  • Racialized emotions and diasporic pain
  • Mental health and popular music
  • The erotics of Autism
  • Queer and trans politics of desire
  • Fetish and non-genital sexuality
  • The cultural phenomenon of glory holes and dick pics
Classroom teaching, lectures, group work, student presentations, excursions, practice-based case-studies, field notes, artistic practices and living labs
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 56
  • Preparation
  • 279
  • Guidance
  • 1
  • Exam
  • 84
  • Total
  • 420
Oral
Individual
Collective
Continuous feedback during the course of the semester
Feedback by final exam (In addition to the grade)
Peer feedback (Students give each other feedback)
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Home assignment
Type of assessment details
BA: https:/​/​hum.ku.dk/​uddannelser/​aktuelle_studieordninger/​kunsthistorie/​ikk_enkeltst_batv_2025/​
MA: https:/​/​hum.ku.dk/​uddannelser/​aktuelle_studieordninger/​kunsthistorie/​ikk_enkeltst_katv/​
Aid
All aids allowed except Generative AI
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship