Storytelling & the Body ~ International Conference

We live in an era where stories about bodies – in/visible bodies, glamorous bodies, engineered bodies, trafficked bodies, dismembered bodies, persecuted bodies – are omnipresent. While bodies are literally made of flesh and blood, our understanding of bodies is constructed through fictional and non-fictional stories that shape perceptions of what constitutes the body, how a body should look, how a body should behave, how a body should experience the world and how bodies should interact with each other. By creating these types of norms, stories also shape perceptions of what constitutes deviant, non-normative and otherwise undesirable bodies. Telling stories about the body is therefore an act loaded with ideological, political, sociological, theological, ontological and aesthetic implications.

At the same time, notions of the body have also had a significant impact on the stories cultures have created and passed down through generations. Suffering bodies are central to the foundational narratives of…