History of the Body in Modern Western Culture. 3 credits, 3 contact hours

Catalog description

Considers medical or scientific history primarily in terms of implications for bodily experience in everyday life. Begins with grand narratives of historical shifts in bodily perceptions and practices, and proceeds to more focused narratives of changing bodily experience, engaging key distinctions between genders, classes, and species as well as perceptions of pain and internal bodily structure. Materials will be drawn from early modern and modern Europe, as well as more recent bodily experience in the United States.