Rebuilding the Body: The Pursuit of Perfection, 1861-2021 (HI3T8)
What's the Point of 'Perfect'?
Module Convenor: Roberta Bivins
Office: FAB3.54 email: r.bivins@warwick.ac.uk
Office hours: Wed 11:15-12:15 TEAMS; Fri. 9:30-10:30 In Person
BOOK A MEETING HERE or contact me by email for an alternative slot.
We live in demanding times. Humans today are bombarded with images of ‘perfect’ bodies, and surrounded by products claiming to perfect our minds and lives. Self-help is big business, and individual success is persistently tied to levels of physical and mental wellness that hover just out of reach. Self-improvement is nothing new -- but our contemporary focus on perfectible bodies has intensified with the rise of secularism, consumerism, and 'self-optimisation'. This module will draw on cultural history, disability studies, and the histories of science, technology and medicine to ask: ‘What is a perfect body, and who is served by the pursuit of perfection?’ Comparisons across global cultures of 'perfection' will test Eurocentric understandings of what constitutes the physical and mental' ideal'.
We will look for the roots of today's culture of self-care and self-improvement; test claims about the benefits and attainability of perfect health and well-being; and historicise contemporary expectations of self-perfectibility. Looking initially at post-conflict rehabilitation, surgeries of assimilation, and the marketplace of human perfectibility, this module will challenge assumptions about ability and disability and set the stage for case studies of 'perfection' consumerism in the second half of the twentieth century.
Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens Taken at the Army Medical Museum (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1865-1868) (Harvard, Countway Library)
Across the module, we will use specific examples of interventions targeting the body and the mind for 'improvement'. From artificial limbs to 'saviour siblings', and from pumping weights to prozac, we will ask whether new tools and techniques of self-help drive or respond to changing ideas about perfect bodies, minds or lives. While the module's principle examples will be drawn from the US and UK, students will also encounter very different ideals and practices of 'perfection' drawn from other cultures.
Syllabus
Week 1 Introduction and Key Approaches
Seminar 1 Histories of Perfection Seeking Seminar 2 Sources, Theories, Literatures
Week 2: Restoring Masculinity: War-torn Bodies and Minds
Seminar 3 Prosthetic limbs Seminar 4 Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Week 3 Repairing Difference: Plastic Surgeries of War and Peace
Seminar 5 Facial reconstruction Seminar 6 Cosmetic Surgery
Week 4 Selling Better Bodies: Commercialising Perfection
Seminar 7 Body-Building Seminar 8 Skin Bleaching and 'Good' Hair
Week 5 Selling Better Brains: Medicating Minds
Seminar 9 Prozac Nationalism Seminar 10 SENDing Neurodivergence
Week 6 Reading Week
Week 7 Pursuing Pleasure: 'Perfecting' Sex
Seminar 11 Vibrators Seminar 12 Viagra
Week 8 Making Babies: New Reproductive Technologies
Seminar 13 Contraceptive Regimes Seminar 14 Reproductive Dreams
Week 9 Seeing and Selecting: Dystopian Perfection
Seminar 15 GATTACA Seminar 16 Future Perfect(s)
Week 10 Body hackers: Self-Enablement and Rejecting “Perfect”
Seminar 17 D/deaf Activism Seminar 18 Hacking Diabetes
Week 11 Conclusion and Critical Essay Workshop
Seminar 19 Body Mods: Beyond Beauty Seminar 20 Writing 'Perfect' Essays
Assessment
- Seminar Contribution (10%)
- 1500 Word Essay (10%)
This essay will explore a single historical source promoting bodily perfection. This might be an image, an advertisement, a piece of historical reporting, or an excerpt from the self-help literature. Students will situate that source in its historical context and use close analysis to understand what ‘perfection’ entailed, and who could or could not become ‘perfect’ in that historical time and place.
- 3000 Word Source-Based Essay (40%)
Use close analysis of a selection of primary sources write a blog for A-level students on a topic related to the pursuit of perfection. Your blog should include eye-catching images and links to reliable, authoritative sources that are accessible to your audience. It should encourage your audience to question and compare notions of human perfection over time, across different geographies, or targeting different groups of people. You may choose to link your topic to a contemporary issue, but you must use historical primary and secondary sources to inform your approach.
- 3000 Word Essay (40%)
Drawing on and extending the case studies we have explored across the module, use the historical literature and primary research to analyse the pressure to be ‘perfect’ and the ways in which individuals, societies, corporations and states experience and respond to changing expectations and ideals of embodiment.