Το Σώμα στη Σύγχρονη Αμερικανική Λογοτεχνία

Με την επιτυχή ολοκλήρωση του μαθήματος οι εκπαιδευόμενοι/ες θα έχουν ιδανικά τα εξής οφέλη:

•  Αναλυτική γνώση ενός αριθμού ποιοτικών κειμένων της σύγχρονης Αμερικανικής λογοτεχνίας
•  Αντίληψη της διαρκούς και αμφίδρομης σχέσης του σώματος με θέματα κειμενικότητας, λογοτεχνίας και θεωρίας (το πώς το σώμα γίνεται αφορμή για τη δημιουργία λογοτεχνίας και θεωρίας, αλλά και το πώς τα κείμενα δημιουργούν πολιτισμικά φίλτρα μέσα από τα οποία αντιλαμβανόμαστε τις «φυσικές» εκφάνσεις του σώματος)
•  Μια αρχική ιδέα για τις διάφορες φιλοσοφικές, κριτικές και πολιτισμικές θεωρήσεις που έχουν κατά καιρούς αναπτυχθεί σε σχέση με ερωτήματα που προκύπτουν από την ενσώματή μας ύπαρξη
•  Με βάση τα ανωτέρω, μια καλύτερη αντίληψη και ένα εργαλείο ανάλυσης για τη δική μας σχέση με το σώμα μας και τους σωματοκεντρικούς «μύθους» που μας επηρεάζουν μέσα από τις δικές μας πολιτισμικο-ιστορικές παραμέτρους.

• A BodilyFictionsReader, σε τέσσερα μέρη σε μορφή PDF, διαθέσιμος στην ιστοσελίδα της διδάσκουσας στο http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou
• Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (έκδοση McGraw-Hill 1988)
• Επιλεγμένα κείμενα από το The NortonAnthology of Theory and Criticism, 2^nd edition καιThe Norton Anthology of American Literature, volume D (αυτά μπορούν να σκαναριστούν ή να βρεθούν και στο διαδίκτυο, αν χρειαστεί)

Διδασκαλία καθ΄ έδρας με βοηθητικό οπτικουακουστικό υλικό και συμπληρωματική-ενισχυτική εκπαίδευση μέσω ασύγχρονης πλατφόρμας.

• Υποχρεωτική εξέταση στο τέλος του έτους, χωρίς δυνατότητα επιτόπιας αναφοράς σε υλικό ή πηγές
• Yποχρεωτικό ερευνητικό Body Project (ομαδικό)
• Παρουσία στους διαλόγους της τάξης
• Προαιρετική ατομική ερευνητική εργασία

Διαθέσιμο μόνο στους φοιτητές, όχι στο ευρύ κοινό.

Χρίστινα Ντόκου
Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια                                    

Η Χριστίνα Ντόκου είναι Λέκτορας του Τμήματος Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, με σπουδές Αγγλικής Φιλολογίας στο Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (Β.Α., 1992) και μεταπτυχιακή ειδίκευση στο Τμήμα Συγκριτικής Λογοτεχνίας του Πολιτειακού Πανεπιστημίου της Πεννσυλβάνια (Μ.Α. και διδακτορικό, 1997). Ειδικεύεται στις σπουδές ταυτότητας φύλου και στη μελέτη του μύθου στη σύγχρονη λογοτεχνία, ενώ πιο πρόσφατα έχει στραφεί και στις αμερικανικές πολιτισμικές σπουδές. Για τα θέματα αυτά έχει συγγράψει μία σειρά άρθρων σε επιστημονικά περιοδικά και έχει κάνει επιστημονικές εισηγήσεις σε συνέδρια στην Ελλάδα και στο εξωτερικό. Είναι επίσης μέλος του Δ.Σ. της Ένωσης Υποτρόφων Προγράμματος Fulbright και μέλος της Εταιρείας Ελληνικής και Συγκριτικής Γραμματολογίας.

Σύνδεσμος για πλήρες βιογραφικό: http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou/CV.docx

• Γνώση της Αγγλικής γλώσσας επιπέδου Proficiency
• Ικανοποιητικές γενικές γνώσεις Αγγλο-Αμερικανικής λογοτεχνίας (Μαθήματα ΤΑΓΦ ΛΥ02, ΛΥ05)
• Γενικές γνώσεις θεωρίας και κριτικής της λογοτεχνίας και του πολιτισμού (Μαθήματα ΤΑΓΦ ΛΥ06, ΛΥ07)

Προαιρετική δευτερογενής βιβλιογραφία:

Armstrong, Tim, ed., American Bodies: Cultural Histories of the Physique (NYU Press, 1996)

Revealing how the human body has served as as metaphor for social process, the anthology unveils the body as intrinsically configured by politics, gender, racial categories, fears of pollution, and commercial forces which exploit and regulate it. Historical snapshots of American bodies over the past two and a half centuries, the essays in this volume cover such diverse subjects as sailor tattoos, maritime cannibalism in the early 1800's, birth control, rest cures for neurasthenia, and, more recently, anorexia, boxing, cyberpunk, and plastic surgery. Drawing from history, literary and cultural studies, and film studies, American bodies is an eclectic, stimulating collection that will challenge many fundamental beliefs about our physical form. (all reviews are from Google Books except when noted otherwise).

Tiffany Atkinson, ed. The Body (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005)

What do we mean when we talk about "the body"? This reader challenges the assumption that it can be invoked as a neutral, or indeed natural, point of reference in critical discussion or cultural practice. The essays collected here foreground the historical construction of "the body" throughout a range of discourses from the modern to the postmodern, and seek to present it not as a biological "given," but as a contestable signifier in the articulation of identities.

Barbara Brook, Feminist Perspectives on the Body (Routledge, 2014)

Feminist Perspectives on the Body provides an accessible introduction to this extremely popular new area and is aimed at students from a variety of disciplines who are interested in gaining an understanding of the key issues involved. The author explores many important topics including: the Western world's construction of the body as a theoretical, philosophical and political concept; the body and reproduction; medicalisation; cosmetic surgery and eating disorders; the body in performance; the private and the public body; working bodies and new ways of thinking about the body.

Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter, Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2011)

Butler is perhaps the most important theoretician of 3^rd-wave feminism on issues of sex, gender and society. In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain sex from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She clarifies the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and via bold readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud explores the meaning of a citational politics. She also draws on documentary and literature with compelling interpretations of the film Paris is Burning, Nella Larsen's Passing, and short stories by Willa Cather.

Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou, and Effie Yiannopoulou, eds. The Future of Flesh: A Cultural Survey of the Body (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009)

The Future of Flesh examines ways in which "flesh" has been re-conceptualized in late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. Its twelve essays analyze contemporary attitudes to corporeal change resulting from pain, death, artistic experimentation or technological intervention, and highlight current transformations in the very definition of "flesh." Cross-disciplinary in their approach, the essays in this collection investigate the limits, the politics and the ethics surrounding corporeal change, and address topics that range from classical heroic bodies, and breast cancer photography to cyberfiction.

David M. Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis (Simon and Schuster, 2008)

In A Mind of Its Own, David M. Friedman shows that the penis is more than a body part. It is an idea, a conceptual but flesh-and-blood measuring stick of man's place in the world. That men have a penis is a scientific fact; how they think about it, feel about it, and use it is not. It is possible to identify the key moments in Western history when a new idea of the penis addressed the larger mystery of man's relationship with it and changed forever the way that organ was conceived of and put to use. A Mind of Its Own brilliantly distills this complex and largely unexamined story.

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 4. vols. (Random House, 1978)

One of the most groundbreaking and important theoretical works on the subject of sexuality and its regulatory mechanisms in cases of “deviancy” (e.g., homosexuality).The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (available in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and online at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/)

Donna Haraway's essay is an attempt to break away from Oedipal narratives and Christian origin doctrines like Genesis; the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." […] The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism—particularly its strong emphasis on identity, rather than affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics. Marisa Olson summarized Haraway's thoughts as a belief that there is no distinction between natural life and artificial man-made machines (From Wikipedia).

David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, eds. The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe (Routledge 1997)

An examination of how the body--its organs, limbs, and viscera--were represented in the literature and culture of early modern Europe. This provocative volume demonstrates, the symbolism of body parts challenge our assumptions about "the body" as a fundamental Renaissance image of self, society, and nation (from Amazon.com)

Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sally Barbara Johnson, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds. Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (

Body/Politics demonstrates how many of the controversies in modern science involve or invoke the feminine body as their battleground. This groundbreaking collection addresses such scientific issues as artificial fertilization, the "crisis" in childbirth management,and the medical invention of "female" maladies and the debates surrounding them. In the process it makes an important attempt to remedy the traditional division between science and non-science by focusing on the interconnection of literary, social, and scientific discourses concerning the female body.

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Columbia UP, 1982).

Kristeva examines the notion of abjection—the repressed and literally unspeakable forces that linger inside a person's psyche—and traces the origin of the abject in the maternal body and hence the very important role the abject has played in the progression of history, especially in religion. She turns to the work of Louis-Ferdinand Celine as an almost ideal example of the cathartic, artistic expression of the abject.

Plato, The Symposium (available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1600)

The defining myth of Western metaphysics on love, gender, sex and the body, including the famous narrative of Aristophanes on androgyny.

PMLA, Special Issue on the Body (May 2004)

A collection of important articles examining a variety of body-related subjects.

Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines (Routledge 1992)

A original examination of the body-machine complex and its effects on the modern American cultural imagination, exploring a range of realist and naturalist writings from Hawthorne and Henry James to scouting manuals and mass-produced culture.

Susan Rubin Suleiman, ed. The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives (Harvard UP, 1986)

In The Female Body in Western Culture, twenty-three internationally noted scholars and critics, in specially commissioned essays, explore these representations and their consequences for contemporary art and culture. Ranging from Genesis to Gertrude Stein and Angela Carter, from ancient Greek ritual to the Victorian sleeping cure, from images of the Madonna to modern film and Surrealist art, the essays cover a wide spectrum of approaches and subject mailer. They all converge, however, around questions of power and powerlessness, voice and silence, subjecthood and objectification. And they point the way to the new possibilities and displacements of traditional male-female oppositions. Androgyny in a new key? This book demonstrates that a blurring of gender boundaries does not have to deny difference.

Φοιτητές/τριες του Τμήματος Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας με ενδιαφέρον για θέματα λογοτεχνίας/πολιτισμού/θεωρίας. Ενδιαφερόμενοι/ες για θέματα Αμερικανικού Πολιτισμού και Λαογραφίας ή Πολιτισμικής Ανάλυσης με επίκεντρο τις ΗΠΑ.