ARTH 346 Gender, The Body, and Representation This course offers a history of the representation of the human body with a focus on traditions of figuration that have shaped and disrupted understandings of the body and gender. The historical relationship between the human body and the social body has formal and ideological implications still felt in the 21st century. In this course, students will study and question the effects of the canonical body on contemporary concepts of gender, beauty, desire, perfection, and athleticism. The perspective of the course will be global, transcultural, and will consider the body in art, performance, and as a vehicle for aesthetic, spiritual, political, and economic meanings.