News

Embodied Learning Symposium
April 6-10
Serkin Center for the Performing Arts

Overview

A free, open to the public symposium presented by the Asian Studies Department. Members of the Marlboro College community will join with imaginative visitors, both local and international, to practice and discuss ideas of Embodied Learning. The group will hear from leading scholars of Embodied Learning, see the work of relevant on-going Marlboro classes, participate in performance art, and experiment with new pedagogies.

What is Embodied Learning?

The concept of Embodied Learning seeks to draw attention to some of the exciting possibilities for education of transcending Cartesian [mind-body] dualism. Different scholars have used the term to explore the following claims:

• Learning is contextual. It happens in a time and place; it happens in a culture and language; it happens amongst a particular group of people.  Attention to these matters of context is essential for making learning (and teaching) effective and meaningful.
• Learning is physical. This is true at the level of the neuron and at the level of the whole body.  Whether one is learning philosophy or Spanish or modern dance, the body is entailed and the body enables.
• Learning is perceptual. What we know - and what we do with what we know - depends on what we perceive, feel, and experience.  Even in our most rational moments, our thinking relies upon our senses as much as upon formal logic.

Embodied Learning is not the same as, but shares sympathies with Experiential Learning, Project-based learning, Situated Cognition, Embedded Cognition, Monism, Physicalism, Phenomenology and Somatics. The symposium will, through a broad range of activities, presentations, and discussions, pursue some of these ideas and contentions.

Featured Presentations

• Performing public history - Ain Gordon, writer/director/performer
• Japanese movement traditions and gender theory - Tomie Hahn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  
• Daoism - Livia Kohn, Boston University (professor emerita)
• Gender, ethnicity and Qigong - Roxana Ng, University of Toronto
• Choreography as Embodied Learning - Candice Salyers, choreographer/performer
• Neuroaesthetics and improvisation - Emily Sweeney, dancer/choreographer
• Public health in China - John Watt, co-founder of Primary Source
• Proprioception or Perceiving in Action - Kate Morgan, choreographer/writer

Schedule (PDF updated April 8, 2011)

In addition to the featured presentations, Marlboro faculty and students will discuss how embodied learning is incorporated into work in their respective disciplines, as well as offering open classes in Tai-chi, West African Dance, and Body-Mind Centering.

Registration is not required and there are no fees. The public is encouraged to attend as many activities as their time permits. Refreshments will be available in lobby and voucher for lunch in the dining hall can be provided.

NOTE: A special pre-symposium kick-off performance by Japanese folk artists, Ranbyoshi, has been added for the evening of Tuesday, April 5.

About

The Embodied Learning Symposium is co-presented by Vermont Performance Lab and made possible by the Freeman Foundation for Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative II.

Candice Salyers' participation in Marlboro College's Embodied Learning Symposium is made possible by Vermont Performance Lab with support from the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

Ain Gordon's participation in the Marlboro College's Embodied Learning Symposium is made possible by Vermont Performance Lab and the Center for Creative Research with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photos of Ain Gordon and Candice Salyers courtesy of Vermont Performance Lab.

For more information, please contact the Marlboro College public relations office at 802-251-7644 or pr@marlboro.edu.