English CMUB. Artist in Residence: Writing Unruly Bodies

Instructor: Roxane Gay
Wednesday, 1:00pm-4:00pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

We spend our lives in unruly, all too human bodies. While doing so, we must contend with the public narratives about our bodies - how they are seen and perceived - and the private narratives about our bodies - how we see and perceive ourselves, how we actually live in our bodies.

We also live in unruly bodies and contend with unruly appetites. We are as weak and fallible in our bodies as we are strong. In many ways our bodies are completely unknowable, but oh, how we try to master our unruly bodies nonetheless. To write about our unruly bodies is to write about bodies in a world that is always trying to control, discipline, and sometimes punish bodies, particularly women's bodies. And so, in this prose writing workshop, we will think through how to write about the bodies we live in the bodies we love and hate, the bodies we had and the bodies we covet. We will think through what it means to write the body into a culture where bodies are often sites of contention. We will also explore writing about the body and disability, the body and violence, and the body at the intersections of identity we inhabit.

Supplemental Application Information: This course will be taught by Roxane Gay, PhD. Application details to be announced.

This course is also offered through the Harvard Medical School as MMH 719.