2015: The "Good" Body
Our bodies play a large role in defining our public and private identities. The ways we use them—and the way others react to them—give clear indications of our beliefs, access, and culture values. Which is why at this historical moment it’s problematic that the body has been deemed, both figuratively and literally, bad.
Our symposium will center on the good body. We’ll use the topic to explore central questions in the liberal arts. What counts as a good body? Who has one? Who doesn’t? And why? These questions—and their varying answers—impact everyone in our Middlebury community and beyond. As technological and medical innovations have shaped our concepts of worthiness, beauty, health, and bodily function, we have to examine how broader contexts matter—how cultural forces, systems of power, privilege, time, and place contribute to how we define “good,” how we define “body,” and, ultimately, how we define the “good body.”
2015 Clifford Symposium Schedule of Events
Facilitated by Catharine Wright, Miguel Fernandez and Maya Doig-Acuna, ‘16
“The ‘good’ Body: An Unfinished Legacy”
Followed by Facilitated Discussion
“Defective, Deficient, and Burdensome: Thinking About Bad Bodies”
“Bodies of Knowledge: From Junipero Serra to Kumu Hina”
“Off the Wall”
“#BodyAsPlaceForAction: To Examine White Supremacy, aka Writing on the Body Revisited”
Participants and Facilitators Chat Over a Light Dinner
Post-Screening Discussion with Leslie Freeman and Scotty Hardwig
Stevie Durocher, 15.5, Debanjan Roychoudhury, 16, Aoife Duna, 16.5
Ellery Foutch: “Life Is Movement: Eugen Sandow, Living Sculpture, and Petrification”
Scotty Hardwig: “Custom Skins: Cyberdancers, Avatars, and Posthuman Anatomies”
Pam Barenbaum: “The Body under Hostile Takeover”
Anson Koch-Rein: “Have You Seen Him As Her?: Gender, Clothes, and the Body in ABC’s Guided Tour of Caitlyn Jenner’s Closet”
“Body Stories: Embodied Writing Workshop”
Barak adé Soleil, with a Post-Performance Discussion Moderated by Christal Brown
Sponsored by: Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, Movement Matters, Queers & Allies, Community Engagement, Anderson Freeman Resource Center, Director of the Arts and Living Dance