ASOA15031U Gender and Body Dynamics. Cross-disciplinary perspectives

The aim of this course :Gender and Body Dynamics in the 21st century is to provide a venue of exchange between international and Danish students across health, science and social sciences to learn about recent developments in the field. The focus will be on interdisciplinary approaches related to sexuality, health,  food and  reproductive body technologies. In addition the course will introduce to new  theoretical and methodological  developments in gender and body studies.  

Recent decades have witnessed an explosive development in the interface of gender and body dynamics. What are the implications of current ideas of gender and body that have become more fluent and multiple?  The variety of turns in late modern technologies and feminist knowledge production have blurred traditional boundaries between public and private and between human and non human: Who owns the body and who disposes over the different parts? And who are responsible for choices and regulations in the field of lifestyles, nutrition and reproductive technologies? And how do the new understandings relocate old and new power structures and rights at regional and global levels?

Gendered bodies are nowadays subject of opposing strategies of deregulation and “free choice” on one hand and of radicalized body governance and interventions from the state and commercial interests on the other hand. Body discipline and purity, have become a central ideals of the current social investment strategy of the developed welfare states as expressed in e.g.  fitness,  anti fat and anti  smoking campaigns. Today the body takes center stage and has become an issue for both personal and collective identities and strategies, which in many ways coincides with a search for new gender identities in late modernity.

The course will be structured around lectures and student presentations of  interdisciplinary theories of gender and body and look at how gender and body dynamics are have been and are produced in different institutional and  thematic sites  The couse consists of  7   double lecture sessions a 4 hours, focused on the following themes: 1.  Theoretical turns and key concepts   excemplified by Beauvoir , Butler, and Barad),  2. Methodological turns and intersectionality  excemplified by Harding, Haraway and Lykke) 3.  Gender and body in cases and methodologies across the disciplines ( qualitative/quantitative) Thematic focus will be on gender and body dynamics in medical  science and cultures, in food, pharma and fitness, as well as gender and body management in bio medical perspectives etc.

In addition to the lectures a couple of institutional  visits will be organized: such as a visit to the Museum of Medical history and to  pharmaceutical company etc.

The course is part of the Gender Certificate initiative at University of Copenhagen.

See:

http://koensforskning.soc.ku.dk/gendercertificate/

and lectures will be presented by a cross-disciplinary  team of faculty members from University of Copenhagen.