Building Bodies, Building Minds

Kennedy Union 211Majors level Human Anatomy has long been taught as a gatekeeping class for medical schools of graduate schools, and has been highly professionalized due to this. It has also been constructed historically in a very hierarchical paradigm that has multiple oppressions supporting both the study of anatomy and the anatomy classroom. Besides these social issues around anatomy, there are the pedagogical issues of treating this material as something to just memorize and not understand that can cause problems for a student of anatomy. Disrupting these processes can be a very powerful force for anti-racism, anti-sexism, and hopefully even close some of the health out-comes gaps between cis, straight, able-bodied and middle class men and other people in society. This talk will present ways to bring in social justice, the arts, and physical activity to teach anatomy better and to help students learn anatomy at a level higher in Bloom’s taxonomy.