Material Culture Annual Symposium - The body as object: the human as material culture
May 1, 2009 at Telus Centre
The human body is developed, changed, and shaped by nature and culture. As a site of experience, expression, and interpretation, the body offers sensation and feeling, but also form and substance that may be inspected and analyzed by the self and others.
This symposium discusses human bodies in relation to the material world: bodies are considered as real, physical entities that are manipulated, depicted, and understood as places where interior sensibility meets external form.
Speakers will cover topics such as:
Susie Orbach: How we ‘get’ a body; Ben Barry and Becky Conekin: How the bodies of fashion models are presented and viewed both today and in the past; Pirkko Markula: How male and female bodies are shaped through exercise; Jorg Scheller: How bodies may be considered as deliberately-constructed works of art; and, Lianne McTavish: How medical imagery may depict bodies as cultural objects that are endowed with moral value.
Join us for what promises to be an exciting day of intriguing ideas about the body!
Speakers, talk titles, and professional titles:
Susie Orbach
How do we get a body?
Psychoanalyst and writer
The New School,
Becky Conekin
Pretty hard work: Professional fashion modeling in
Senior Research Fellow
Ben Barry
Why reflect reality? Ideal and ‘real’ models in fashion.
PhD Candidate
Jorg Scheller
The body as an object of artistic expression
PhD Candidate
Lianne McTavish
The embryo as a modern object
Professor, History of Art, Design and Visual Culture
Pirkko Markula
‘Sculpt your body’: Exercise as body management
Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation
For more information contact us at material.culture@ualberta.ca
Register online - click here