Contemporary Materialities from a Feminist Perspective

INSTRUCTOR: Niurca Marquez

SECTION: UHD

SCHEDULE: Wednesday, 2:00pm – 3:15pm

This course engages some of the latest research on the material effects of ethical, political, scientific, environmental and social practices. For our purposes, materiality is defined as the notion that the physical properties of a cultural artifact have consequences for how the object is used. The course presents students with a new way of considering materiality via understandings about the human body, the natural world and the material world. Through a feminist perspective, students will have an opportunity to reconsider the ideas and assumptions that have prevailed about the body. The course includes topics such as the impact of disability experience, the material reality of race, the significance of sexual difference and the complex interactions between nature and traumatic events such as Hurricane Katrina. It is a course where students will have an opportunity to explore how nature and the body collide. The course will include specific case studies and the most recent and cuttingedge ideas around these topics.