杏吧论坛

Dr Dylan Mulvin

This course is available on the MSc in Global Media and Communications (杏吧论坛 and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (杏吧论坛 and UCT), MSc in Global Media and Communications (杏吧论坛 and USC), MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society), MSc in Media and Communications (Research), MSc in Media, Communication and Development and MSc in Politics and Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, offers will be made via a random ballot process, with priority given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations. Whilst we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via 杏吧论坛 for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is accepted onto the course.

Every day we re-encounter our bodies through the mediations of technology. A sleep tracking app tells you about your bad night’s sleep; your phone tells you which Underground stations are “step-free” but doesn’t know about the broken lift at Victoria station, and it doesn’t know about your knee pain; in the mail you receive some DNA results from a popular ancestry website (it’s not the one that partners with drug companies; but it is the one that partners with law enforcement); your job, your university, and your grocery store ask you to select a race and a gender every time you fill out a form; on your way home your noise-cancelling headphones run out of battery; and adding insult to injury your phone tells you your “screen time” has increased 8% since last week. This class is prompted by such moments, by asking how sites of conflict and breakdown can illuminate the ways our bodies are understood, tested, and reconfigured through technology.

Beginning with the assumption that there is no single, stable understanding of “the normal human body,” this course introduces a wide range of interdisciplinary theories to interrogate human bodies and their relationshi