SOCIOLOGY RESEARCH SEMINAR
Nerve: the sociology of the body and filming the self
Lenore Manderson
Monash Univerity
Different media (visual and performing art, film and written text) provide alternative ways of representation, including narratives that illustrate how individuals shape their lives following dramatic changes to the body following accident or severe illness. Drawing on research on social understandings of the physical body, including her own experiences, Lenore Manderson addresses questions of the impact on identity and understandings of self following traumatic corporeal changes. She discusses difficulties related to "auto-ethnography," distance and generalization, and in this context, turns to the potential of using various methods, media and other approaches unconventional for social scientists. This includes still photography, video and film. Manderson considers the risks that people take when they choose to embrace rather than disguise their bodily selves, and to personalize the theory as well as physicality of corporeal change. From this, she will describe the making of the film Nerve. Nerve (USA, 29 mins) developed through Manderson’s collaboration with Wendy Woodson. Woodson, an award-winning choreographer, art videographer and performance artist, is Professor of Theatre and Dance at Amherst College, MA and the Five College Dance Department, and was a Senior Fullbright Fellow at VCA in 2007. For a video clip, see http://www.amherst.edu/~wwoodson/PresentCompany/nerve.html. The film will be screened as part of this seminar.
Bionote
Professor Lenore Manderson, PhD is Professor at Monash University, Australia. Previously, she was Professor of Women’s Health, The University of Melbourne (1999-2005), and prior to that, Professor of Tropical Health, The University of Queensland (1988-1998). She held an inaugural Australia Research Council Federation Fellowship to conduct research on chronic illness, disability, social relationships and well-being in Australia and Southeast Asia. She publishes extensively, and is editor, inter alia, of Global Health Policy, Local Realities (2000), Rethinking Wellbeing (2005) and Chronic Conditions, Fluid States (2009). She is a member of the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Association of Anthropology, and chairs the papers and dissertation awards committees. In 2007 she was awarded the Mentor Award of the Society for Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, and in 2008, is the Hillel Friedland Professorial Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
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