Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts (ARTV 24113/34113)

Brian Callender, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine

Catherine Sullivan, Professor of Visual Arts and Cinema and Media Studies

The Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts is a multidisciplinary course designed to explore the human body through the unique combination of medical science and the performing arts. Drawing broadly from medicine, anthropology, and the performing arts, this course seeks to understand the human body by comparing and contrasting the medicalized body with the animated or performing body. With an emphasis on experiential learning, the primary pedagogy will be interactive activities that allow students to learn about the human body through interactions with other bodies as well as their own. The medical sequence of the course will examine how medicine uses the body as an educational tool, views the body through radiographic imaging, utilizes the dead body to make diagnoses, and endeavors to prolong life. Activities associated with this sequence will include exploration of the dissected cadaver in the anatomy lab, viewing of radiographic images, use of the ultrasound on oneself, a visit to the morgue, and interactions with individuals who received organ transplants. The performing arts sequence will explore the mind and body as a continuous system through somatic pedagogies at the intersection of theater, dance, physical and psychotherapy. Students will use their own bodies as instruments of inquiry into somatic pedagogies such as Feldenkreis technique in physical and occupational therapies, methodologies drawn from Biomechanics in the theater, from Contact Improvisation in dance, and Bioenergetics in psychotherapy. These two distinct sequences will be explored within the larger cultural context of the human body and more specifically through the deliberate tension created by interactions with the dead/inanimate body and the living/animated body. Taken as a whole, The Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts will provide students with the unique opportunity to explore the human body through an engaging multi-disciplinary experience.

Thursdays, 1:30-4:30 PM

Students examine historical anatomy books in Special Collections at the Joseph Regenstein Library, during the Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts class Thursday, Jan 15, 2015, on the University of Chicago campus. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago) 

Students examine historical anatomy books in Special Collections at the Joseph Regenstein Library, during the Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts class Thursday, Jan 15, 2015, on the University of Chicago campus. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago) 

Hannah Burnett, a PhD student in anthropology, works with Brian Callender, MD, during the Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts class in the Anatomy Lab of the Biological Sciences Learning Center (BSLC) Thursday, Jan 15, 2015, on the University of Chicago campus. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago)  

Students get a look at a pacemaker during the Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts class in the Anatomy Lab of the Biological Sciences Learning Center (BSLC) Thursday, Jan 15, 2015, on the University of Chicago campus. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago)  

Catherine Sullivan (DoVA) gives students feedback during their final presentations for Exploring the Body in Medicine and the Performing Arts on Tuesday, Mar 17, 2015, on the UChicago campus.