About
In January 2009, a 22-year old college graduate put her virginity on the auction block, with offers reportedly reaching $3.7 million. The New Yorker magazine recently ran a story about individuals who make a living “guinea-pigging” for pharmaceutical companies and, earlier this summer, a man was arrested in New Jersey for his role as a “matchmaker” in the black-market sale of human kidneys. Debates continue to flourish over the ethics of “contract” surrogacy, human cloning, and the buying and selling of human cadavers. In short, the body sells—literally. And even if our bodies are not “on the market,” we are immersed “in the market.” Capitalist society places a premium on appearance and bodily presentation. Consumer culture “disciplines” the body—sometimes literally through dietary regimes and body modification—encouraging us to embody a certain look or appearance.
Over the course of the semester, we will read and respond to several different kinds of texts—works of literature, anthropology, sociology, medical ethics, and cultural studies—that explore the body as a “contested commodity.” In what ways does the marketplace depend on our understanding of the body as a consumer good? Do we have the right to turn our bodies into objects of sale? Is the body “sacred”? Who suffers if we outlaw the commodification of the body? We will take up such questions as intellectual writers. As students of writing, we will pay particular attention to how writers define their key terms, develop their methods of inquiry, and construct arguments about the body and consumer practices for specific audiences. You will learn how to use and effectively respond to the work of other writers, how to articulate a strong central claim for an academic audience, and how to develop your own new and exciting writing projects.
The course will include a variety of writing assignments. You will post entries to our Blog and offer comments in response to your colleagues’ posts. Our seminar work will also include three Short Essays (~750 words) and two Major Projects. The Short Essays offer a space for you to develop and hone skills essential to effective academic writing: summary, textual analysis, response, research, synthesis, and revision. For your first Major Project (1,500 words), I will invite you to substantially revise one of your Short Essays. The second Major Project (2,500 words) will require you to perform some outside research, compose an annotated bibliography, and write an essay that offers an interesting and unique perspective on the body as a contested commodity.