Susan Bordo, professor of English and women's studies and the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky, will deliver a lecture, "Beauty on the Brain," on Friday, March 8, at 4:10 pm in the Hamilton College Chapel. Her visit is part of The Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture's "Body in Question" series. The lecture is free and open to the public. Bordo's visit to campus is co-sponsored by the Levitt Public Affairs Center and Faculty for Women's Concerns.
In a slide and video-illustrated talk, Bordo will explore the emergence of the new psycho-biological "science of beauty," examining its central arguments and its current appeal. Do we really need to choose between biology and culture? She will argue that our biological development is always entangled with cultural learning, but also that cultural diversity and flexibility are themselves natural products of human evolution.
Bordo is the author of The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. and The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. She is also editor of Feminist Interpretations of Descartes and co-editor (with Alison Jaggar) of Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. She lectures nationally on contemporary culture and the body, featuring topics such as eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, beauty and evolutionary theory, racism and the body, masculinity and the male body, sexual harassment, and the impact of contemporary media.
In the words of Susan Squier, professor of literature at Penn State University, Bordo's writings "can be said to have catalyzed the birth of the new interdisciplinary field of work known as `body studies'." Unbearable Weight, a University of California Press best seller, was the first book to draw attention to the profound role of cultural images in the spread of eating problems across race and class. It is widely cited and discussed in scholarly writing and used in courses throughout the disciplines. Named a Notable Book of 1993 by The New York Times, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and received a Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women In Psychology. Columnist Katha Pollitt named it one of the five best books in Women's Studies of 1993. The Chronicle of Higher Education did a major piece on the book and Bordo's influential work on cultural images of the body.
Bordo's most recent book, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private, was published in June 1999 to critical acclaim. The Male Body has been featured in Mademoiselle, Elle, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, George, Ladies Home Journal, and has been the subject of numerous radio and television interviews, including NPR's "Morning Edition" and MSNBC's "Special Edition With Ann Currie." Most recently, Bordo was prominently featured in a Learning Channel documentary, "The Science of Beauty." Her visit is sponsored by the Levitt Center and the Faculty for Women's Concerns.
For more information, call the Kirkland Project office at 315-859-4288.
