Course description
This course will explore how bodies enable us to examine cultural dynamics, socio-political structures and economic constraints, of which they are the instruments, vectors, witnesses and bearers. Our bodies are not simply ‘material’ foundations that enable life: they shape its contours, between constraints and possibilities, while at the same time being the subject of categorizations (of race, gender, identity etc.) that shape our experiences. The aim of this course is to explore the multiple processes through which social and cultural dynamics are articulated with these bodies and extend into our lives, both individual and collective. A variety of time periods and situations will be mobilized to support the discussions.
Critically exploring how bodies are shaped by history, identity and/or national issues, and processes of classification and hierarchization, the memory of which they bear, requires complex scientific approaches that need theoretical foundations and a decentred positioning at the heart of this module. It also involves guiding students to think about how these bodies can support new ways of inhabiting a desirable future, a central challenge for our contemporary societies, which are subject to numerous uncertainties. Through them, we can create new individual and collective horizons in 21st-century societies.
More fundamentally, it is a question of guiding students towards a new sensitivity to what bodies teach us about the worlds we live in, here and elsewhere, their traditions, their strengths and weaknesses. In short, the aim is to guide students to think critically about bodies as cultural and biopolitical spaces and instruments.

Learning Outcomes
-Acquisition of theoretical skills on ways of problematising the body in Anthropology
-Development of a nuanced understanding of the links between biological and social lives
- Become familiar with debates on social inequalities in health, sexual mutilation, and the return of human remains, from a decolonial perspective
- Restitution of a discourse through a participatory approach
-Strengthen the presentation and discussion skills through seminar participation and project work.

Virtual component
A pre-recorded one-hour course (available via Moodle the 20 of July):
- Teacher’s presentation
- Introduction to the course and its teaching methods
- Introduction to the framework for reflection and work.

Two virtual sessions (60 minutes each) will follow:
-22 of July (from 10 to 11 am) : the students will be invited to introduce themselves and describe their background
-27 of July (from 10 to 11 am): choice of seminar topic, discussion

Syllabus / Weekly structure (2 days a week)

The first week (4 and 6 of August) is devoted to laying the theoretical foundations for a scientific approach to bodies as instruments and witnesses of society. This framework will also be explored during later discussions with dedicated fieldwork. The concepts of multiple bodies, identity, racialisation and subjectivity will be discussed through case studies from fieldwork conducted in Europe, Africa and Brazil. Students will be offered an initial sensitive approach through participant observation in situ, to lead them to think and experiment, based on their own experience, about how bodies ‘speak’
-The body as a social, political and biological construct
-The diversity of bodies and the construction of identities
-Racialisation, subjectivity and power relations in different contexts (Europe, Africa, Brazil)

Readings: (available on Moodle)
- Butler Judith (1993). Bodies that Matter. Routledge New York & London: Introduction.
-Csordas T. (2025). Something other than its own mass: Embodiment as corporeality, animality, and materiality, Anthropological Theory 2025, Vol. 25(1) 3–29.
-Jablowsky Nina (2020). Skin Color of Race. American Journal of Anthropology, 175 (2): 437-447.
-Kwan Samantha (2010). Navigating Public Spaces: Gender, Race and Body Privilege in Everyday Life, Feminist Formations, Vol 22 n° 2 pp144-166.
-Ogata Winifried, Ojong Vivian (2013). The thin/thick body ideal: Zulu women’s body as a site of cultural and postcolonial feminist struggle, Agenda, 27: 4: 110-119
-Opas Minna (2005). Mutually Exclusive Relationships: Corporeality and Differentiation of Persons in Yire (Piro) Social Cosmos, Tipiti: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, vol 3 (2).
-Santos-Granero Fernando (2012). Beinghood and people-making in native Amazonia. A constructional approach with a perspectival coda. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (1) : 181-211.

The second week (11 and 13 of August) will explore the links between biological and social bodies through the lens of global health inequalities. Beyond the impact of living conditions and environments on our bodies and lives, we will examine the concepts of discrimination, inequality, vulnerability and embodied violence in order to question the multiple traces and memories that permeate global health relations and are deployed by bodies. The HIV and Covid pandemics will serve as a basis for reflection.
-Embedded health inequalities, the spatialisation of bodies, lived experiences
-HIV/AIDS and Covid-19: the construction of at-risk groups, stigmatisation and the moralization of bodies
-Bodies in lockdown, bodies under surveillance, the biopolitics of bodies

Readings (available on Moodle) :
-Castro Arachu, Farmer Paul (2003). Infectious disease in Haïti, Science & Society – EMBO, vol 4 (special issue)
-Chung Roger Yat-Nork, Li Minnie Ming (2020), Anti-Chinese sentiment during the 2019-nCoV outbreak, The Lancet, n°395: 686-687.
-Crenshaw K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43 (6): 1241-1299
- Gwendolyn Albert, Szilvasi Marek (2017). Intersectional Discrimination of Romani Women Forcibly Sterilized in the Former Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic, Health and Human Rights Journal Vol 19 (2): 24-34.
-Monk J, Ellis P., Esposito MH et al. (2021). Beholding inequality: race, gender and returns to physical attractiveness in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 127 (1): 194-241

The third week (18 and 20 of August) will address the issue of interventions on the body, including female genital mutilation. In addition to the concepts of identity, domination and categorisation associated with these bodies subjected to various acts (cutting, ‘repair’ surgery), we will explore the concepts of embodiment and subjectivation.
-Repair and subjectivation: what does it mean to ‘repair’ a mutilated body?
-The biomedicalisation of trauma
-Domination and body norms: new ideals of the female body

Readings (available on Moodle):
- Andro, A., E., Lesclingand, M. (2014), « Long-term consequences of female genital mutilation in a European context: Self perceived health of FGM women compared to non-FGM women», Social Science and Medicine, 106: 177–184.
-Boddy Janice (2026). The normal and the aberrant in female genital cutting, HAU/Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6 (2) : 41-69.
-Fusaschi Michela (2023). Gendered genital modifications in critical anthropology: from discourses on FGM/C to new technologies in the sex/gender system, Your Sexual Medicine Journal 35: 6 – 15
-Van Bavel Hannelore , Seleyian Agnes, et al. (2024) Understanding the roles of Alternative Rites of Passage and Public Declarations in FGM/C abandonment: An ethnographic study among the Loita Maasai, Kenya, Social Science & Medicine, 359, 116412.

The fourth week (25 and 27 of August) will focus on the issue of returning human remains held in European public collections to their countries. Based on ongoing debates, we'll talk about the status and challenges of these human remains, which are elements of knowledge, heritage, and collections. What are we talking about? An ethnological collection? Signs of culture? Human elements designated as cultural heritage? The aim is to highlight the ethical and moral dynamics that shape North-South relations in the period of decolonization.
-The body as a scientific object versus the body as a person.
-Restitution as a form of memory-based and postcolonial reparation.
-The decolonisation of anthropological knowledge production
-Restitution of bodies and rehumanisation.

Readings (available on Moodle):
- Batt Fiona (2021). The repatriation of African heritage: shutting the door on the imperialist narrative,’ African Human Rights Yearbook: 328-350
- Kößler Reinhart (2018). Imperial skullduggery, science and the issue of provenance and restitution: the fate of Namibian skulls in the Alexander Ecker Collection in Freiburg, Human Remains and Violence, Vol 4, No. 2, 27–44
- Lamptey Pearl & Apoh Wazi (2020). The restitution debate and Return of human remains: Implications for bioarchaeological research and cultural ethics in Africa, Contemporary Journal of African Studies, 7 (1): 97-115
- Shigwedha Vilho Amukwaya (2018). The homecoming of Ovaherero and Nama skulls: overriding politics and injustices. Human Remains and Violence, Vol 4, No. 2, 67–89

Teaching and Evaluation Methods

Lessons takes the form of a seminar focused on guided reflection and discussion. Students are facilitated in reflecting on their own experiences. They will conduct small-scale observations, and analyze materials through the lens of the weekly topic.

1. Thematic presentation given orally in seminar: analysis of a contemporary vulnerability based on the body, drawing on two authors from the course (30%)
2. Creative project: podcast or visual essay: Students will expand and deepen their seminar-based work by further developing the empirical observations and its restitution in an alternative form (40%)
3. Reflective journal (approx. 1,500 words) based on one's bodily experience in Venice (to be submitted via Moodle by 28 August at the latest (30%)

Last updated: June 25, 2026