Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Leuphana Bachelor (B.A./B.Eng./B.Sc./LL.B.) -> Major Kulturwissenschaften (bis Studienbeginn WiSe 22/23) -> Projektmodul Kunstraum

Lehrveranstaltungen

The Professor's Body. Academic Affects and Habitus (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Christopher Weickenmeier

Inhalt: As bell hooks famously observed in her 1993 essay “Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process”, the professor’s body is marked by both “repression and denial”. Caught up in the long-exhausted Cartesian split between body and mind, teaching in higher education appears to be a predominantly cerebral affair. In such an environment, the language for articulating and intervening in what the professorial body is, remains critically underdeveloped, particularly where it intersects with histories of race and gender. The public program at Kunstraum will focus on the professorial body as a site of both disciplinary power and radical pedagogical emancipation. As hooks insists, there is a latent transgressiveness to higher university education that demands a critical analysis of both power and pleasure. Such an analysis must begin with the ongoing failure of many universities to address the countless examples of sexual harassment and violence experienced by women-identifying and non-binary/gender non-conforming students.[1] The continuing difficulty of hooks’ appeal, however, becomes clearer when considering the intense discussions in feminist theory and academia about student-teacher relations in cases such as Jane Gallop, author of Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, or more recently Avital Ronell, the NYU professor accused of sexual harassment by a former queer student. Echoing Amia Srinivasan’s recent call for a “sexual ethics of pedagogy”, A Professor’s Body seeks to identify the legal, social and institutional conditions necessary to differentiate discrimination from transgression. Besides two longer, more theoretical seminar sessions, the seminar will unfold over five evenings, during which students will actively engage with artists and writers on the issues outlined. Guests will include Leda Bourgogne, Rui An Ho, Franz(is) Kabisch, Rahel Spöhrer and Maximiliane Baumgartner. The session with Rahel Spoerer on Nov 13 will consist of a writing workshop.