Contours and canyons of health: Learning health equity through body mapping

Abstract

Critical health communication (CHC) explores how meanings and enactments of health are linked to power dynamics and systemic inequalities by centering the body in research and practice. When teaching CHC in a postsecondary classroom, it is imperative to provide students with an opportunity to engage in embodied learning to think critically about the taken-for-granted assumptions about health, illness, and disabilities. This semester-long assignment employs body mapping, an arts-informed method of embodied storytelling to help students engage in intimate and affective learning of a health condition of their choice. Students conduct in-depth research about the condition, create a fictional character who lives with the condition, and produce life-size maps of the character using their own body contours. Courses This assignment is suitable for upper undergraduate or master’s level communication studies courses featuring CHC, health humanities, social determinants of health, and social justice. Objectives Upon successful completion of this semester-long project, students will be able to: demonstrate a clear understanding of how a health condition of their interest is represented, marketed, and promoted through the media; describe sociocultural, ideological, and structural forces that shape media representations of the health condition; ethically and compassionately represent the health condition as a holistic experience through a fictional character they develop; create a life-size body map of the fictional character that embodies the health condition; and critically reflect on their semester-long learning and articulate strategies for improvement.