Rebuilding the Body: The Pursuit of Perfection, 1861-2021 (HI3T8)
What's the Point of 'Perfect'? (Term TWO Venice/Part-Time Module)
Module Convenor: Roberta Bivins
Office: FAB3.54 email: r.bivins@warwick.ac.uk Office hours: Th. 2-3 TEAMS; F 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 Topics: Histories of Perfection Seeking/Sources, Theories, Literatures
Week 2: Restoring Masculinity: War-torn Bodies and Minds
Seminar Topics: Prosthetic limbs/PTSD
Week 3 Repairing Difference: Plastic Surgeries of War and Peace
Seminar Topics: Facial reconstruction/Cosmetic Surgery
Week 4 Selling Better Bodies: Commercialising Perfection
Seminar Topics: Body-Building/Skin Bleaching and 'Good' Hair
Week 5 Selling Better Brains: Medicating Minds
Seminar Topics: Prozac Nationalism/SENDing Neurodivergence
Week 6 Reading Week
Week 7 Pursuing Pleasure: 'Perfecting' Sex
Seminar Topics: Vibrators/Viagra
Week 8 Making Babies: New Reproductive Technologies
Seminar Topics: Contraceptive Regimes/Reproductive Dreams
Week 9 Seeing and Selecting: Dystopian Perfection
Seminar Topics: GATTACA/Future Perfect(s)
Week 10 Body hackers: Self-Enablement and Rejecting “Perfect”
Seminar Topics: D/deaf Activism/Hacking Diabetes
Week 11 Conclusion and Critical Essay Workshop
Seminar Topics: Body Mods: Beyond Beauty/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%)
Choose an example from a curated list of novels, films, autobiographies, or broadcasts, and use it to explore attitudes towards the pursuit of perfection. Examples will include sources from different cultures and geographies from the Cold War to the present day. Does perfection look the same everywhere? Are ideas of perfection converging or diverging?
- 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.