Running and Imagination

Catalog description

This course explores running as an activity of the embodied imagination--through reading, discussion, and running. When we run, our minds work with and against the body’s limitations. Those limitations can be viewed as obstacles to be overcome, but also as constructive forms of resistance that give meaning to our activities. To run a certain distance at a certain pace gives shape to the activity just like paragraphs shape prose or form and meter shapes poetry. Running can also be a way of exploring difference and resisting social constraints; it can also be used an expression of those constraints. Class meetings will alternate between discussions of texts—fiction and non-fiction—that explore the relationship between the physical activity of running and human imagination and identity, and clinics and practice sessions on various aspects of running as a physical activity for health and competition. We will occasionally run together, at whatever pace suits the members of the class. Students in this class should be interested in running and willing to run. But being a fast or accomplished runner is not a requirement!