Thinking Bodies: Literature, Film, Performance
Interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar taught online in Spring 2021 at Columbia University
Thinking Bodies explores the role of the body in sharing and creating human knowledge by bringing together world literature classics, iconic documentaries, underrepresented global traditions, and contemporary critical theory. Designing and teaching the course allowed me to share my interdisciplinary research with a diverse group of students, whose academic majors included neurobiology, religion, anthropology, literature, film, and medical humanities.
Outcome-Oriented Design
I created the syllabus on the principles of backward design, tailoring specialized content to develop high-level transferable skills like leadership and collaboration, interpretation, creative thinking, and self-reflection.
Level 1: Foundational Knowledge
Understand and synthesize readings from a variety of disciplines within the humanities.
Level 2: Evaluation
Discuss and compare the different ways in which course materials engage with the role of the body in human life and culture.
Level 3: Interpretation
Analyze the portrayal and problematization of the body in various types of cultural production, applying concepts garnered from theoretical and critical readings to reach an independent interpretation.
Level 4: Integration and Reflection
Contextualize the role of the body within history, culture, society, and politics, interpret their interconnections with an outlook towards relevance to personal experiences or current events.
Engaging and Relevant Content
My students explored embodiment through the lens of feminist theory, affect studies, religion, psychoanalysis, and performance studies, and addressed current
topics like racial justice, gender and sexuality, and public health crises.
To attract a wide range of students, the syllabus featured several classics of world literature, but the majority of content highlighted the relevance of underrepresented cultures: we
considered embodied memory through Japanese dance; bodies on stage through Polish theater; and the agency of technologically modified bodies through contemporary Bosnian queer sci-fi.
Clear Expectations and Feedback
To support the intellectually demanding learning objectives, I provided clear strategies for attaining them, kept an open channel of communication and support, supplied metrics for evaluation, and created structures that welcomed creativity while staying firmly grounded in the academic content of the course.
Scaffolded Assessments
Formative:
- In-class pair and small group work.
- Moderating group discussion on Slack.
- Self-reflective journaling
Summative (higher stakes, graded):
- Midterm paper to assess foundational understanding and analytic skills.
- Final project (multimedia or conventional paper) to synthesize course content and lived experience.
Bidirectional Communication
Instructor to Student:
- Detailed feedback on written assignments.
- Individual support throughout the learning experience.
- Guidance in planning and executing summative. assessments.
- Availability through Slack, email, and office hours.
Student to Instructor:
- In-class polls about needs and instructor performance.
- Collaboration on scheduling of workload and deadlines.
- Feedback conversation with external peer observation.
- Final course evaluations.
Detailed Guidelines and Rubrics
Set measurable criteria to evaluate each component of the course and shared them with students.
- Qualitative rubrics provided on the syllabus.
- Articulating the learning goals for in-class activities and assessments.
- Regularly discussed criteria and rubrics in class.
- Used rubrics to guide the planning of projects.
Through detailed peer- and self-assessment rubrics, students took agency in evaluation by:
- Grading discussion moderator performance.
- Grading discussion participation performance.
- Self-reflection on own performance as discussion moderator.
Equitable Evaluation Criteria
Students submitted statements of purpose with their multimedia projects to ensure equitable grading based on academic rather than creative accomplishment. The statement addressed the following:
- What question(s) did the project set out to explore?
- How do knowledge and materials from the course illuminate the question?
- How does the choice of creative medium enhance interpretation?
- How did the process of learning and creating shape understanding?
- How does the project facilitate meaningful connections to experience?
Student-Centered Integrative Learning
After a semester of learning that engaged with their identities, academic backgrounds, skills, interests and motivation, all students chose to make creative projects instead of a conventional final paper. Discovering the personal relevance of course objectives enhanced their understanding of core course topics, resulting in original, relevant, and compelling works. Five of the students agreed to share their projects in an online course exhibition, linked below.
Rhymes with Mose
Payton McCarty Simas’s short film explores the unconscious impact of gendered upbringing on the formation of genderqueer bodies and identities. In collaboration with dancer Madison O’Halloran, they inject insights from Japanese butoh dance into the hyperfeminized dictates of Western ballet, seeking to express the affective relationship with one’s genderqueer body brought about by performing a rigidly gendered movement form.
What Makes My Body Mine?
Caitlyn Stachura’s photographic triptych is a reclamation of the religious shame, dysphoria and dysmorphia that have ruled their relationship to their body, of dredging up the uncomfortable and the unpleasant and deciding how it’ll shape their future self.
Embodiment of Tenderness
Drawing on insights in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, Ruby Kernkamp relies on a reading of tenderness to find spaces of trust and support between touching bodies.
