This event is hybrid, and is for both the public and practitioners*, who can earn 2.0 credit hours after completing a lecture evaluation sent after the event.

Unsettling Wellness: Towards a Praxis of Body Sovereignty

With Athia N. Choudhury, PhD.

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.

Learning Objectives:

• Examine the histories of diets and dieting, including the foods created and circulated via U.S. militarism, and the impact of eugenics/progressive era reform on our modern global food system.

• Understand how to reimagine an approach to body neutrality and sovereignty in healing praxis. 

• Form an understanding about health as a set of intimacies between the interpersonal, the social, and the political.

About the Speaker: 

Athia N. Choudhury PhD. is a writer and cultural theorist interested in questions of race, food, militarism, eugenics, and body surveillance in the 20th-21st century. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California with a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her current book project examines how wellness and diet culture become major ideological exports of U.S. empire that produce global consumers whose nutritional and medical decisions become racially coded and gendered during the American century. She is currently the Postdoctoral Associate in Asian American and Diaspora Studies at Duke University.

*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.

Refund policy: Recipients who give notice of cancellation two weeks or more ahead of the date of the event will receive a full ticket-price refund. Recipients who give notice of cancellation one week to thirteen days ahead of the date of the event will receive a refund of 50% of the ticket price. Except in the case of dire emergency circumstances, to be determined by Administration, refunds will not be permitted if notice is given in less than a week of the date of the event start date/time. Service fees will not be refunded.