Embodied Teaching and Situated Knowledge: A Pedagogy Roundtable

In this first event of the Embodiment as Knowledge Translation series, Green College Leading Scholars discuss how embodiment, care, positionality and relationality are valued in their respective disciplines and enacted in their pedagogical approaches.

Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai works on health informatics, human-computer interaction and the design and evaluation of digital health technologies. Specifically, he seeks to explore how digital health technologies and trauma-informed user-centered design approaches can be leveraged to address inequities in sexual and reproductive health access for marginalized populations. Primarily, he conducts informatics-related research on endometriosis-associated sexual pains, sexually transmitted infections, and reproductive health. He applies user-centered design and integrated knowledge translation approaches by engaging patients and healthcare professionals in his program of research.

Sara Ann Knutson is a historical scholar working at the intersection of global history, archaeology and museum anthropology with expertise in the Islamic World and its global interactions across premodern Afro-Eurasia. Her teaching, research and educational leadership bridge the premodern-modern divide in the historical discipline by exploring the enduring influence that the Afro-Eurasian past holds in contemporary constructions of cultural heritage and in practices of collection, not least in museums and archives. Her current work centres the Islamic World’s role in global history as well as the contemporary communities who are important stakeholders in the construction of this past.

Jillian Lerner is a historian of modern visual culture with research interests in photography, media theory and social justice pedagogies. She studies the ways that art-forms and technologies of seeing shape human experience and the lifeworld. Her current project considers how photographic practices perpetuate or contest imperialist modes of extraction and appropriation. Investigating diverse strategies of sense-making, storytelling and historical retrieval, Jillian explores how media artifacts and histories can be developed as tools for perceiving, relating and imagining otherwise. How do we foster responsibility for the worlds (communities, ecologies, stories, futures) we create and destroy?

Jasmin Ma is a Kinesiologist specializing in helping people with diverse physical abilities to be physically active. Her educational leadership activities involve the development and implementation of experiential learning opportunities in community-based exercise settings. Her research focuses on supporting strength training behaviour change and developing methods for tailored physical activity interventions among people with chronic disease and disability. Meaningfully engaging community and clinician partners throughout the research process is at the core of her lab’s research approach, with the intention to help ensure that their work gives back to those who the research is intended for.

Mila Zuo works on global film stardom, transnational Chinese and Asian cinemas, film-philosophy and critical studies of race, gender and sexuality. Her book Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (2022) explores the ways in which Chinese women film stars perform oppositional stances against white supremacy, Chinese colonialism, heteropatriarchy, gender and sexual normativities, and capitalist work. Her current and future research focuses on representations of ancient magical beliefs in global film and media, and cinema as a divinatory and spell-binding phenomenon.

Organized by Green College Leading Scholars, this series invites perspectives on how to locate, understand, experience, enact and care for embodiment. How is the body activated as source and repository of knowledge? Where do we find generative inquiry into the affective and social dimensions of producing and exchanging knowledge? This series of lectures and roundtables explores the performance of care; relational accountability; and the emotional labour involved in archival work, storytelling, translation, healthcare, creative practices and teaching.

Series Conveners: Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai, Nursing; Irem Ayan, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies; Stephen Dabugblor, Journalism, Writing and Media; Julia Henderson, Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy; Sara Ann Knutson, History; Jillian Lerner, Art History, Visual Art and Theory; Jasmin Ma, Kinesiology; Elif Sari, Anthropology; Rosanne Sia, Gender, Race Sexuality and Social Justice; Logan Smilge, English Language and Literatures; Helena Zeweri, Anthropology; and Mila Zuo, Theatre and Film.