Representations of the Body

Representations of the Body

This is an image of a skeleton in front of a rhinoceros from the book “Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body” translated from the Latin by Bernhard Siegfried Albinus. The book was published in 1749 and is in the public domain.

This course challenged students to examine how depictions of bodies have real-world consequences for the ways we relate to our bodies, interact with one another, and navigate the larger structures that regulate bodies (such as healthcare systems). Through the analysis of a variety of visual and written texts, we examined the roles that institutions, disciplines, and media outlets play in constructing and circulating narratives about the body, as well as the implications of these narratives in our cultural understanding of health and disease. Research questions that guided our approach included:

– How do different disciplines shape representations of bodies?
– How is disease depicted, and by whom?
– Who decides what qualifies as “healthy” vs. “unhealthy?”
– How are nonvisible entities like the mind or spirit depicted in relation to the body?
– How might bodies be defined as “natural” or “enhanced,” and who makes this distinction?

To engage more deeply with these questions, students attended five field trips to the following institutions: The Cushing Collection, The Yale University Art Gallery, The Beinecke Library, and the Yale Center for British Art.

For their final projects, students applied theories, methods, and critical perspectives of two or more disciplines they chose to a question of their own design in relation to course content. They had the option of planning a class session for the course on a topic related to the major themes, but one which we did not cover as a class; creating a digital exhibit of 3-4 original visual representations; or composing a blog post that compares two creative works related to the course theme. A few of the latest student projects can be viewed by clicking the “Spring 2025 Student Projects” tab at the left of this page.