What happens to human-animal, human-technology, human-object, and human-environment relations when viewed through the lens of aging? This question animates our exploration of four major forms of more-than-human relationality in U.S. film and performance.
Taking the aging body as its point of departure, this seminar explores how film and performance stage entanglements between humans, animals, objects, technologies, and environments. Drawing on Age Studies, Performance Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Posthumanist Theory, we investigate how performances of aging generate alternative temporalities, embodied forms of knowledge, and modes of relationality that invite us to rethink dominant constructions of humanness.
Particular attention will be paid to multispecies relations, human-technological assemblages, material entanglements between bodies and objects, and ecological forms of embeddedness. Throughout the semester, we will examine how aging bodies make visible forms of vulnerability, dependency, and interconnectedness that challenge established ideals of autonomy, productivity, individualism, and human exceptionalism.
