Embodied Research in the Arts and Sciences

Faculty Coordinators: Teri Rueb (Media Study), Anne Burnidge (Theatre&Dance)

Embodied Research in the Arts and Sciences provides a platform for interdisciplinary research, collaboration, discussion, and debate around the emerging field of embodied research.

Mark Johnson and Tim Rohrer state, “The importance of embodiment in cognition is now widely appreciated in the cognitive sciences, yet there remains considerable debate as to what the term ‘embodiment’ actually means. Is ‘the body’ merely a physical, causally determined entity? Is it a set of organic processes? Is it a felt experience of sensations and movement? Is it the individual physical body, or does it include the social networks such as families without which it would cease to exist? Or is the body a socially and culturally constructed artifact?” The answer the authors embrace is that all of these components are intrinsic to the meaning of embodiment. This Research Workshop seeks to explore the many forms that embodied research can inhabit and to unearth diverse questions concerning embodiment across, between, and within various disciplines.

Participation in the group spans the arts, humanities, and physical and social sciences and draws upon the recognition that the performative and affective turns in philosophy and critical theory have opened new linkages across the arts and sciences. Through the formation of this workshop, we seek to bring artists and scholars together to recognize the situatedness of knowledges and the practices through which they are produced. Our aspiration is to reveal very different ways of knowing and doing across the arts and sciences, revealing similarities and differences and fostering a greater understanding from which individual and collaborative research may unfold.