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ERIC Number: EJ758225
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 12
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0882-4843
EISSN: N/A
Incongruent Bodies: Teaching while Leaking
Moore, Lisa Jean
Feminist Teacher: A Journal of the Practices, Theories, and Scholarship of Feminist Teaching, v17 n2 p95-106 2007
In this article, the author describes her experience, hired seven years ago by a CUNY school, The College of Staten Island (CSI). She expresses that although incredibly challenging, that first year taught her an invaluable lesson. It was through these embodied experiences that she now understands the teacher's body, her body, creates a simultaneous (and often unexpectedly parallel) lesson plan for students and colleagues. Her body, she explains, without any intentional or conscious instruction, leaked. It became a vehicle for students to inquire and learn about "sociology" of bodies, genders, race, and sexualities, despite her well-constructed syllabi or overheads. She goes on to say that when her body leaks, it creates and disrupts meanings. It disrupts the socially expected bounded rationality of members of the academy. Attributions of meanings to bodily fluids are made through larger socio-cultural processes. This essay, culled from processes of self-reflection, explores how the author's body is incongruent to her students and her colleagues. Incongruence occurs when what others expect about the progressive logic of someone's body conflicts with the anticipated biography. In her life, when incongruence is revealed, it creates both humorous and painful experiences for her and some of her students. But these moments of incongruence are rarely planned or intended. Rather, as this essay details, these revelations of incongruence are often spontaneous, irrational, and somatically initiated. (Contains 4 notes.)
University of Illinois Press. 1325 South Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6903. Tel: 217-244-0626; Fax: 217-244-8082; e-mail: journals@uillinois.edu; Web site: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/main.html
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New York
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A