The Body Archive

What does it mean for the body to be a source of knowledge? How do we come to know the world from a situated perspective that connects us to the accrual of past history and the shifting landscapes of future trajectories? Is ‘knowing thyself’ through the body a necessary condition for decolonization? What sense of ‘attunement’ emerges from remembering the body as more than itself? 

This course offers an investigation into these questions by unpacking the idea of the body archive using critical pedagogy and a combination of social science and art approaches. By drawing on interdisciplinary academic texts from sociology, critical theory, feminist and gender studies, cultural studies, as well as, artistic practices of archiving, the course offers different possibilities for thinking through, constructing, and critiquing the idea of the body archive. 

Drawing on the network of Haraka Experimental Lab for Arab Art and Social Thought under al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYUAD, students will engage in situated discussions with academics, artists, and archivists during field trips to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Synthesizing a wide range of materials including academic texts, films, photography, and performance, students will develop and produce a final project using a digital auto-ethnography method, Self Tracing, that will be part of a curated exhibition open to the public