This course is intended to provide students with a graduate-level introduction to physical cultural studies (PCS) of health and physical activity from inter- and trans-disciplinary theoretical perspectives. In the process of examining PCS theoretical paradigms, we will pay attention to a range of key thinkers who have contributed to the study of PCS of health and physical activity. We will also introduce anti-oppression scholars whose theoretical and analytical paradigms continue to offer PCS alternative and radical visions for social justice.

The relationships between culture, power, embodiment, the production of knowledge and the conditions under which lives are governed, subjected to practices of normativity, discipline, scientization, (dis)placement, othering, vulnerability, and violence will be examined. We will explore how future of PCS of health and physical activity might benefit from philosophical, social, and political paradigms of resistance, abolition, livingness, responsibility, and reciprocity and from new ways of ordering earthly life.