Ozempic, #SkinnyTok, before/after narratives, and the Clean Girl aesthetic – today’s trends insist the body is a never-ending project of optimization. But why are (some) bodies treated as problems to be solved? In this seminar, we will take these examples as starting points to ask: What is a body, and how do bodies become intelligible, political, or even dangerous? Whose bodies are deemed “normal,” and whose are marked as excessive, deviant, or in need of correction?
We will explore how bodies are constructed, regulated, and contested across cultural, social, and political contexts. The seminar serves as an introduction to classical and contemporary body theory in cultural studies. We will ask how norms, discourses, and regimes shape bodily subjectivity, and how gender, race, class, fatness, disability, and coloniality intersect in the production of “acceptable” bodies. The seminar also considers how bodies are not only governed but also actively (re)produced through media, culture, and emotional economies. We will analyze how bodily norms are circulated, challenged, and reimagined, particularly in digital and global contexts.
The seminar invites students to reflect on how larger power structures, from colonial histories to capitalist economies, shape bodily visibility, value, and vulnerability. How do systems of power determine which bodies matter and which are rendered disposable? How do embodied resistances such as disability justice or fat liberation challenge these logics? Through discussion, media analysis, and close reading, students will develop critical tools to interrogate, and interrupt, how bodies are commodified, governed, and reclaimed.
- Kursleiter*in: Mona Rosenberg