This presentation provides tools for creating inclusive pedagogy for anatomy courses. When a “normative” body is assumed in an anatomical text, the body depicted is likely cis-gender, male, white, and nondisabled. As a professor in a dance department at a historically women’s college that is gender diverse (inviting applicants who are cis-gender female, transgender, and non-binary), I call on new standards that resemble and affirm the identities of my students. In this presentation, I reflect on iterations of my Anatomy of Movement course, outlining three distinct shifts in my pedagogy. The first iteration de-centered patriarchy by engaging with texts written solely by women. The second iteration decentered the gender binary, drawing from practices in LGBTQ+ sexual and reproductive healthcare. The third iteration included disability studies in the syllabus to create access intimacy (Mia Mingus) and access culture (Kinetic Light) in the classroom. Anatomy, queerness, and accessibility become natural companions that illuminate multiple, intersectional identities in anatomical pedagogy. Relating these areas of study encourages students to use their own bodies as their primary “texts” and to discuss anatomy in a way that does not pathologize embodiments different from their own. In order to contextualize this ongoing process, I will share a resource list, examples of access-centered assignments, practical ways to build access culture in the studio, and an analysis of student outcomes.
Please see above abstract for Dance and Society: Developing Community, Empathy, and Understanding through Dance
My research resists the notion of “the body” and orients toward the lived experience of “this body.” Integrating disability and queerness as companions to anatomy in dance studies, this pedagogical approach empowers students to use their own bodies as their primary “texts” and to discuss anatomy in a way that does not pathologize embodiments different from their own. It de-centers the gender binary and the assumption of a normative or neutral body in language, assigned texts, experiential activities, and syllabus design, and encourages a more expansive view of each body’s capacities and personal limits. When disability, queerness and functional anatomy are brought into dialogue in the dance classroom, new questions emerge around value, agency, injury, and aesthetics. Drawing from trans-affirming practices in LGBTQIA+ sexual and reproductive healthcare, disability justice, access intimacy, consent culture, and queer theory, I work to bring mechanics, poetics, and cultural contexts into relation.
This paper was selected to be part of a research “HUB”: Co-Imagining Cross-Cultural and Anti-Colonial Research: Looking for Radical Pedagogies and Artistic Micro-Activisms convened by Christine Greiner (Pontifical University of São Paulo) and Cristina Fernandes Rosa (University of Roehampton).
