Embodied Methodologies: Cultivating the Scholar's Bodymind for New Models of Animate Inquiry
The Embodied Methodologies group blogs about its experiences.
Cultures practice somatic conditioning, predisposing members to experience the world in particular ways. (“Soma” is the Greek word for body. The term “somatic” is used within the field of embodiment and movement-based inquiry to describe the body experienced by him or her from within.) All knowledge traditions involve styles of embodiment based on respective metaphysical and epistemological assumptions about reality, mind, and body. The predominant somatic style for Western inquiry – the “disciplined body” (Dolan, 1993) - involves sedentary reflection, audition, vision, and suppression of the investigator’s subjectivity. Contemporary consciousness scholars describe its limitations, calling for “embodied realism” using non-dualistic, embodied methodologies integrating first, second, and third-person stances based on the “aware body” (Dolan, 1993). The proposed project will use a somatic approach, Body-Mind Centering®, offering structured sensory and perceptual experiences to stimulate novel embodied experiences thus encouraging methodological innovation. Faculty from diverse disciplines will couple an individual somatic apprenticeship with shared reading, dialogue, and workshops to explore potential approaches to and impacts of embodied methodologies on scholarly inquiry. This program will culminate in seminars, journal article(s), and a major proposal for longer-term study, developing new methodologies for social and biological sciences which typically rely on detached, mechanistic methodologies for inquiry.
Craig Hassel (Food Science and Nutrition), Principal Investigator
Upcoming Events
Thursday, October 22
"Embodiment and the Sense of the Self: Views from Meditation and Cognitive Neuroscience": A talk by Evan Thompson
Evan Thompson is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto who works in the areas of cognitive science, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind. He is the author of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (with Francisco Varela, 1991) and Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (2007).
Organized by the Thinking Body, Moving Mind Collaborative.
4:00 p.m., 100 Rapson Hall
Previous Events
Friday, September 26
"Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom: The Body and Knowing": A talk by Don Hanlon
12:00 - 1:30 p.m, 140 Nolte Center
Monday, March 23
Movement Workshop with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
1:00-3:00, Northrup Studio 5
Tuesday, March 24
"Kinesthetic Experience: Understanding Movement Inside and Out": A presentation with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte