Continuing Education
Institute for Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Phenomenology of the Body: Beyond the Upright
June 18 - 21, 2012
Location:
IUPUI Campus Center Room CE 309
420 University Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Fees: Early Bird Registration and Early Bird Special, must register before April 2, 2012, click on Fees.
Contact Hours: 18.2. Participants must attend each session of the Institute.
Daily Schedule:
- June 18 - 20: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EST
- June 21: 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon EST
This course provides for in-depth exploration of hermeneutic phenomenology in the context of research and scholarship in healthcare and the human sciences. Guided by a guest philosopher, participants will explore primary philosophical texts and share current philosophical scholarship across disciplines. Participants from all disciplines are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Participants will learn and experience:
- Neoteric interpretations of hermeneutic phenomenological texts and selected phenomena of interest
- Introduction to newly released translations of phenomenological texts
- Contemporary interpretive scholarship presented by US and international researcher exploring issues in the health and human sciences
- Participation in a global community of interpretive scholars that meets yearly. This multi-disciplinary community welcomes everyone. Come and join us!
What is the Institute like?
Both didactic and experiential activities are included in the Institute design. Mornings are structured to provide presentations by and discussions with a visiting philosopher. Afternoon sessions are flexible and may include presentation of completed interpretive studies, working sessions focused on group analysis of sample texts or small group discussions centering on topics of interest. Participants may gather for multi-site collaborative interpretive research meetings and informal dialogues with the visiting philosopher.
Syllabus: 2012 Syllabus
Call for Abstracts: Click here for information. The deadline for submitting abstracts is April 27, 2012.
Visiting Philosopher: Andrew Mitchell, PhD, Emory University
Phenomenology of the Body: Beyond the Upright
This course will sketch a brief, critical history of phenomenological accounts of the body. Phenomenology begins from an understanding of the body not as material object, but as lived in the flesh. This body is not a “what” so much as a “how,” and in readings drawn from Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Erwin Strauss we shall examine the ways in which our bodies give us the world. In all these accounts, however, there is a privileging of the able, mobile, and upright body. The last session of the course critically addresses this tendency by taking up the phenomenological account of the disabled body in the work of Kay Toombs. In so doing, the course aims to develop a more inclusive conception of embodiment and reopen the question of what it means to exist corporeally
The first session of the course takes its start in Husserl’s distinction between the body as material object (Körper) and as lived-body (Leib). The lived body not only orients us in the world, but shapes our conceptions of objectivity and spatiality as well. These ideas are further advanced in the work of Merleau-Ponty, where the embodied subject is understood in terms of an “I can” rather than an “I think.” The second session of the course examines how the motility of this able-bodied subject allows it access to the world. The able body is the “upright” body, according to Strauss, and his “kinematic” conception of posture, standing, and walking is the subject of the course’s third session. The course concludes with Toombs’ phenomenological account of the disabled body, leading to general reflections on the consequences of phenomenological conceptions of embodiment for medical practice.
Readings
Husserl, Edmund. “Perception, Spatiality, and the Body.” Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. In The Essential Husserl. Ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 163-185.
Merleau Ponty, Maurice. “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility.” In Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1992. 98-147.
Strauss, Erwin. “The Upright Posture.” Trans. Erling Eng. In Phenomenological Psychology: The Selected Papers of Erwin W. Strauss. New York: Basic Books, 1966. 137-65.
Toombs, Kay. “Reflections on Bodily Change: The Lived Experience of Disability.” In
Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine. Ed. Kay Toombs. New York: Springer, 2001. 247-61.
________. “The Body.” Chapter three in The Meaning of Illness: A Phenomenological Account of the Different Perspectives of Physician and Patient. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992. 51-88.
Andrew J. Mitchell’s work addresses issues of relationality, mediation, materiality, as well as the philosophy of literature. He is the author of Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling (Stanford, 2010), translator of Heidegger's Insight Into That Which Is: Bremen Lectures, Basic Principles of Thinking: Freiburg Lectures (Indiana, forthcoming), co-translator of Heidegger's Four Seminars (Indiana, 2003), and author of numerous articleson Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida, Joyce, and Fassbinder, including most recently "Entering the World of Pain: Heidegger" (Telos 150) and "The Exposure of Grace: Dimensionality in Late Heidegger" (Research in Phenomenology 40:3).
Click here to register only for Institute for Hermeneutic Phenomenology
If you have questions about the Call for Abstracts or the 2012 Syllabus, please contact the Center for Research in Nursing Education (CRNE) at crne@iupui.edu or (317) 274-0869.
The planning group and the presenters do not have a conflict of interest in the presentation of this content. No commercial support or sponsorship was received for the development of this Institute.
The Indiana University School of Nursing Office of Lifelong Learning is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission of Accreditation.
