Course description
We have bodies and are bodies at the same time. The body as the prerequisite and basis for human existence makes it a universal concern. During centuries, the foreign, exotic and possessed body functioned as a counter-image to the body of Western societies. In addition to the aesthetic value, the social significance of clothing and body adornment in the form of tattoos, scars, body paint or hairstyles aroused research interest. However, it was only in the last few decades that the manifestation and embodiment of social and cultural norms in Western societies became a focus of research.

While the body was initially conceptionalized as a (passive) object of social inscription and mirror of social order by structural approaches, phenomenologically and praxeologically oriented perspectives have increasingly come to the fore that conceive the human body as the starting point and subject of culture.

However, for a long time the biotic body was perceived as an undisputed given on which the body's sociocultural analysis took place. In the meantime, the seemingly natural body is also understood as constructed. This shift in perspective was made possible by the ethnographical study of Western societies, the influence of Michel Foucault's work, feminist and science-critical positions and a critical medical anthropology since the 1980s. The sociocultural aspects of the emergence and application of biomedical knowledge about (gendered) bodies in particular began to be analyzed; medical science was no longer regarded as exclusively objective, but rather as part of one specific epistemological model among others. Transsexual and intersexual bodies in particular provoke a reflection on biological essentialisms and dual categories that were previously taken for granted, like those of body and mind, nature and culture, subject and object, man and women or sex and gender.

Moreover, fundamental changes in biomedical research and practice such as reproductive technologies, plastic surgery or organ transplantation provoke a change of body boundaries and raise new questions about human identity. Research in the context of new kinship studies and critical medical anthropology analyses these new realities; Donna Haraway's conceptual creation of the cyborg or Orlan's performative artistic interventions problematize boundaries in a radical way. By dealing with resistant, disciplined, intersexed, modified and commodified bodies in this seminar, we will explore their temporal and spatial as well as their scientific, sociopolitical and cultural boundedness. We will also analyze the complex relationships between conceptual dualisms that continue to influence natural and social sciences.

In addition to a theoretical discussion, we will explore methodological questions in research inspired by the anthropology of the body, as the course participants will engage in a joint research project in Venice. A visit of the in-house museum Museo del Manicomio, which traces the history of the former psychiatric hospital of San Servolo, will also be part of the course.

Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction: What is the Body?
Compulsory Reading: Lock 1993: Cultivating the body

Week 2: Social Bodies
Compulsory Reading: Douglas 1970: The Two Bodies

Week 3: Body Techniques
Compulsory Reading: Mauss 2009 (1934): Techniques of the Body

Week 4: Lived Bodies and Embodiment
Compulsory Reading: Merleau-Ponty 2012 (1945): Phenomenology of Perception [excerpt]

Week 5: Walking in the City of Venice
Compulsory Reading: De Certeau 1980: Walking in the City

Week 6: Hermaphrodite Bodies
Compulsory Reading: Epstein 1990: Either/Or-Neither/Both

Week 7: Body Parts: Organ Transplantation
Compulsory Reading: Ikels 2013: The Anthropology of Organ Transplantation

Week 8: Making Bodies: Assisted Reproduction
Compulsory Reading: Inhorn 2008: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Cultural Change

Week 9: Body Substances
Compulsory Reading: Carsten 2011: Substance and Relationality: Blood in Contexts

Week 10: Body Modifications: Cosmetic Surgery
Compulsory Reading: Davis 2003: Surgical Passing

Week 11: Cyborgs: Beyond Dichotomies
Compulsory Reading: Haraway 1991: A Cyborg Manifesto

Week 12: Concluding Discussion
Compulsory Reading: Jackson 2002: Familiar and Foreign Bodies

Learning outcomes
Students in this course will:

• learn about theories in the anthropology of the body

• get acquainted with approaches in medical anthropology and new kinship studies

• demonstrate an understanding of contemporary approaches in the field by analyzing and contextualizing a variety of texts

• develop self-reflection and critical thinking through the engagement with feminist and science-critical approaches

• get acquainted with anthropological research methods and conduct an own small research in group in the city of Venice

• articulate convincing evidence-based reasoning in presentation, discussion in working groups and plenum and in the final written paper

Teaching and evaluation methods
The seminar is based on weekly readings. Students have to prepare the reading for each session and bring the texts to the classroom (printed or in electronic version) for collaborative exercises and common discussion.
The course is open to students from all disciplines and does not require preliminary knowledge about the topic. However, students are required to prepare one text per week. In addition to regular attendance and active participation (1), each student has to give an oral presentation of 15 minutes in class based on a text from the bibliography (2), has to write an essay of 3-5 pages connected to a “research walk” in Venice (3) and to write a final paper of 12-15 pages, including bibliographical references and notes (4). The topic of the paper is chosen in agreement with the professor. 

Grade distribution
30% attendance and active participation in class based on the weekly readings
20% oral presentation in class
20% essay
30% written paper

Bibliography

Ahmed, Sara - Stacey, Jackie (eds) 2001. Thinking through the Skin. London and New York: Routledge
Bestard, Joan 2004. Kinship and the new genetics. The changing meaning of biogenetic substance. In: Social Anthropology 12(3): 253-263.
Bourdieu, Pierre 2013 (1972). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Braidotti, Rosi 1994. Nomadic Subjects. Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia Univ. Press
Carsten, Janet 2011. Substance and Relationality: Blood in contexts. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 40 (2): 19-35.
Carsten, Janet 2003. After Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cevese, Rossella 2011. “Who knows if one day, in the future, they will get married…?” Considerations about breast milk, migration and milk banking in Italy. Unpublished paper
Clarke, Julie 1999. The Sacrificial Body of Orlan. In: Body & Society 5 (2-3) 185–207.
Clarke, Morgan 2007. The Modernity of milk kinship. In: Social Anthropology 15(3): 287-304.
Clarke, Morgan 2011. Islam and New Kinship. Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon. New York and Oxford: Berghahn
Collie, Natalie 2013. Walking in the City. In: Gender Forum 42.
Csordas, Thomas 1990. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. In: Ethos 18(1): 5-47.
Csordas, Thomas S. 1999. The body’s career in anthropology. In: Henrietta Moore (ed.): Anthropological Theory Today. Cambridge, p. 172–205.
Taboo. London and New York: Routledge
Davis, Kathy 1993. Surgical Passing. In: Feminist Theory 4(1): 73-92.
Davis Kathy. 1995. Reshaping the Female Body: the Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery. London and New York: Routledge
De Certeau, Michel 1980. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press
Dejarlais, Robert - Throop, Jason C. 2011. Phenomenological approaches in anthropology. In: Annual Review of Antrhopology 40(1): 87-102.
De Ras, Marion - Grace, Victoria 1997 (eds). Bodily Boundaries, Sexualised Genders and Medical Discourses. Palmerston North: Dunmore.
Dolezal, Luna 2010. The (In) Visible Body: Feminism, Phenomenology, and the Case of Cosmetic Surgery. In: Hypatia 25 (2): 357–75.
Douglas, Mary 2001 (1966). Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and
Douglas, Mary 1996 (1970). Natural Symbols. London and New York: Routledge
Dreger, Alice D. 1999: Intersex in the Age of Ethics. Hagerstown: University Publishing
Dreger, Alice D. 1998. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Intervention of Sex. Cambridge and London: Harvard Univ. Press.
Edmonds, Alexander 2007. “The poor have the right to be beautiful”. Cosmetic surgery in neoliberal Brazil. In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(2): 363–381.
Epstein, Julia 1990. Either/or - neither/both: sexual ambiguity and the ideology of gender. In: Genders 7: 99-142.
Epstein, Julia 1995. Altered Conditions. Disease, Medicine and Storytelling. New York and London: Routledge
Featherstone, Mike (ed) 2000. Body Modification. London and Oxford: Sage
Feldman, Allen 1991. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press
Foucault, Michel 1989 (1961). Madness and Civilization. London: Routledge
Foucault, Michel 2003 (1963). The Birth of the Clinic. London: Routledge
Fraser, Mariam - Greco, Monica (eds) 2005. The body. A reader. London and New York: Routledge
Franklin, Sarah 2013a. Biological Relatives. IVF, stem cells, and the future of kinship. Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press
Franklin, Sarah 2013 b. From Blood to Genes?: Rethinking Cosanguinity in the Context of Geneticization, in C H Johnson et al (eds.): Blood and Kinship: matter for metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present, New York and Oxford: Berghahn, p. 285-320.
Grosz, Elisabeth 2017 (1995). Bodies-Cities, in: Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick (eds): Feminist Theory and the Body. A Reader. New York and London: Routledge, p. 381–87.
Haraway, Donna 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in: Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London and New York: Routledge, p. 149-181.
Ikels 2013: The Anthropology of Organ Transplantation. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 89-102.
Inhorn, Marcia C. - Birenbaum-Carmeli, Daphna 2008. Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Culture Change. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 177–96.
Inhorn, Marcia C. - Tremayne, Soraya. 2016. Islam, Assisted Reproduction, and the Bioethical Aftermath. In: Journal of Religion and Health 55 (2): 422–30.
Jackson, Michael 1983. Knowledge of the Body. In: Man 18 (2): 327-345.
Jackson, Michael 2002. Familiar and Foreign Bodies: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Human-Technology Interface. In: JRAI 8(2): 333-346.
Katz, Jack - Csordas, Thomas J. 2003. Phenomenological Ethnography in Sociology and Anthropology. In: Ethnography 4 (3): 275–88.
Kessler, Suzanne 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press
Lock Margaret 1993. Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge. In: Annual Review of anthropology 22 (1): 133-155.
Lock, Margaret et al. (eds) 2000. Living and Working with the New Technologies. Intersections of Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press
Lock, Margaret - Farquhar, Judith (eds). 2007. Beyond the Body Proper. Reading the Anthropology of Material Life. Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press
O’Connor, Erin 2007. Embodied knowledge in glassblowing. The experience of meaning and the struggle towards proficiency. In: The Sociological Review 55: 126-141.
Orlan. http://www.orlan.eu
Mauss, Marcel 1973 (1935). Techniques of the Body. In: Economy and Society 2 (1): 70–88.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 2012 (1945). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge
Parkes, Peter 2004. Milk kinship in Southeast Europe. In: Social Anthropology 12: 341-358.
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Prentice, Rebecca 2008. Knowledge, Skill, and the Inculcation of the Anthropologist: Reflections on Learning to Sew in the Field. In: Anthropology of Work Review XXXIX (3): 54-61.
Repo, Jemima 2013. The Biopolitical Birth of Gender: Social Control, Hermaphroditism, and the New Sexual Apparatus. In: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38 (3): 228–44.
Rabinow, Paul (ed) 1991. The Foucault reader. London. Penguin
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy - Lock, Margaret 1987. The Mindful Body. In: Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1(1): 6-41.
Scheper-Hughes - Wacquant, Loic (eds) 2002. Commodifying Bodies. London: Sage
Schiebinger, Londa 2004 (1993). Nature’s Body. Gender in the Making of Modern Science. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press
Sharp, Leslie 2000. The commodification of the body and its parts. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 287-328.
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Wacquant, Loic 2003. Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour among Professional Boxers. In: Body & Society 1(1): 65-93.
Wacquant, Loic 2011. Habitus as topic and tool. Reflections on becoming a prizefighter. In: Qualitative Research in Psychology 8: 81–92.

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: June 17, 2026