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Campus | Bryn Mawr |
Semester | Fall 2021 |
Registration ID | ITALB216001 |
Course Title | Body and Mind |
Credit | 1.00 |
Department | Comparative Literature |
Instructor | Benetollo,Chiara |
Times and Days | MW 02:40pm-04:00pm
|
Room Location | OL116 |
Additional Course Info | Class Number: 1439 In this course, we will explore representations of the relationship between body and mind, starting from 19th-century Russian novels that conceptualize love as a physical ailment and ending with the history of Alzheimer’s disease. Talking about the relationship between body and mind will allow us to investigate how gender roles and models of womanhood and masculinity shaped the evolution of modern sciences, from psychiatry to obstetrics. Investigating how bodies have been (and continue to be) read, we will discuss systems created to police societies by cataloguing bodies, from Lombroso’s phrenology to modern fingerprinting and face recognition softwares. Finally, we will consider how our understanding of the relationship between body and mind has changed over time. Many of the theories we will discuss during the semester are now considered outdated pseudo-science - but how can we conceptualize the difference between science and pseudo-science? As new categories and disease designations appear to substitute the old ones, which are the implications of creating a label for a constellation of existing symptoms? The course will be taught entirely in English. There will be an optional hour in Italian for students of Italian. Approach: Inquiry into the Past (IP); Enrollment Cap: 22. Extra hour in Italian for students of Italian |
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