HIST 221 - History of The Body

4 Credits

1 Units

This course explores the history of the body by focusing on its relationship to medicine, health, sports, and society since 1500. We explore how science, medicine, and sports have “made” our bodies. We will ask, whether the body could be a machine and whether there is one sex or two sexes. We will investigate how the bodies moved, how they were exercised, and how the sports developed. We will then explore the ways the bodies were dressed. Finally, we will take a look at how the body became political, how it was defined in terms of race and otherness. We engage these themes through readings, discussions, analysis of images and movies, and writing. An integral part of this class is to see the history of the body as a contested field of changing historical interpretations.(PTK:GLO)

Credit Type Code: Letter Grade