Laurie Phillips Memorial Lecture
Unsettling Wellness: Towards a Praxis of Body Sovereignty with Athia N. Choudhury
In-Person and Virtual | Friday, May 10 | 7-9pm ET | 2 credit education hours*
General Admission Fee: $50.00 | WTCI Member Fee: $42.50 | For public and practictioners
What does it mean to reach towards good health? This talk unsettles the easy assumption that health is a neutral metric for personal and public good. We’ll examine how the idea of modern health and wellness historically emerged through various U.S. imperial reform projects of the 20th century that pathologized eating and bodily management for women and minorized subjects. The case studies–ranging from historical, contemporary, to scientific-–demonstrate how the metaphor of the “body as a machine” in need of fuel is a recent phenomenon that transforms how we think about the act of eating and our relationships to food. By examining the histories of diets and dieting, the foods created and circulated via U.S. militarism, and the impact of eugenics/progressive era reform on our modern global food system, we will reimagine how to approach body neutrality and sovereignty in healing praxis. In thinking about health as a set of intimacies between the interpersonal, the social, and the political, we can work towards imagining different ways to hold our bodies–in tenderness, in grief, in care.
*Qualifying practitioners: WTCI [dba for The Women’s Therapy Centre Institute] has been recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for NYS licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0102 and creative arts therapists #CAT-0018, by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Workers as an approved provider of continuing education for NYS licensed social workers #SW-0361, and by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0049.