Jody Valentine (Pomona College)
In academia, mind/body dualism has long created a paradoxical experience of embodiment. Faculty and students are expected to live “lives of the mind” as though the (higher, rational, transcendent) mind exists entirely separate from the (lesser, animal, material) body. Recent developments in neuroscientific and psychological research demonstrate how the nervous system connects the brain with the body (Kain, Tyrrell, and Levine 2018; Porges 2011) while Feminist and Critical Race Theory show that the idea of pure objectivity is a construct of the white-supremacist patriarchy (hooks 1994; Okun 2021). Yet discourses of anti-embodiment and false objectivity continue to do harm, most acutely impacting those of us with non-dominant positionalities -- with black, brown, female, trans, non-binary, and queer bodies.
Pedagogical approaches that invite critical reflection are essential tools for transforming these structures, yet as Audre Lorde made evident thirty years ago: The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (1984). Somatic pedagogy offers an alternative toolkit inspired by the liberatory pedagogy of Paolo Friere (2018, 1994), Henry Giroux (2001), and bell hooks (1994, 2003), informed by the pleasure activism of Audre Lorde (2021), adrienne marie brown (2019), and Sonya Renee Taylor (2021), with techniques adapted from the therapeutic modality Somatic Experiencing® (Payne, Levine, and Crane-Godreau 2015).
Drawing on specific examples from my own experience teaching courses in the field of ancient Mediterranean studies, I will demonstrate how somatic pedagogy supports faculty and students to collaboratively dismantle deeply entrenched, oppressive structures and to co-create universally accessible, trauma-informed, anti-racist, feminist, pro-queer, (and pleasurable) educational experiences. I will begin by leading attendees in a short somatic exercise. We will then discuss the impact of this exercise on our bodies and how nervous-system regulation supports transformational educational experiences for all (Burgstahler and Cory 2010; Mays 2000; Wagner and Shahjahan 2015). A list of resources for deeper learning and suggestions for how attendees might implement somatic pedagogy in their own courses will be provided.