EMBODIED BOOK CLUB

Welcome

Welcome to EMBODIED BOOK CLUB, a monthly book club that introduces PGRs from across the College of Arts to embodied reading practices. It's an invitation to step away from your desk, to connect with body and breath, to each other and to a text during a series of three monthly gatherings.

In doing so, it seeks to enable researchers across disciplines to:

• Discover new embodied reading methods through somatic practices.
• Generate new knowledge with a sensorial deep dive into a critical text.
• Create an interdisciplinary community by collaborating with other PGRs in a process of discovery.

Each month will read a different non-fiction text then meet in a movement studio to reflect on our reading experience through a two hour workshop that I, Rebecca (bio below), will facilitate. The series will be hosted near the university and will run for three months, April, May and June.

What will a session include?

MOVING REFLECTION: Starting with simple exercises that encourage you to connect with body and breath, I will introduce a series of improvisational tasks that reflect aspects of text, either in themes or its form.

CREATIVE EXPLORATION: You will then be invited to discuss the text, your responses providing stimulus for further movement enquiry. The process is designed to help you read with your whole being, to uncover new connections and images, to make ideas spatial and encounter a unique understanding parsed through their bodily experience.

What text will we read first?

The first text that we will look at is: The Work of Art in Mechanical Age of Reproduction by Walter Benjamin. We will then agree as a group our next text. You can bring a suggestion.

Do I need performance or somatic movement experience?

No! Just a curiousity about exploring embodied approaches.

The structure and methods are drawn from BOOK CLUB FOR DANCERS, a series that I created for Independent Dance in London. A qualified teacher of physical theatre improvisation, I will adapt these methods for those who may be new to embodied approaches, making the approach accessible to all.

Can I sign up for the whole course?

Ideally, yes! That way we can build discovery as a group and deepen our personal pracitce through the three sessions.

What will happen next?

Following the workshop series, I will summarise our collective methods of embodied reading and the possibilities they offer researchers with an article that can be shared across the College of Arts and beyond. The workshop also has the potential to be offered as a Public Engagement activity at a future date, building community around new ways to read together.

Who is Rebecca Mackenzie?

I am in the third year of studying for a PhD in Theology as Creative Practice. I'm a novelist (In a Land of Paper Gods, shortlisted for Royal Society of Literature prize 2017 and an Observer Book of the Year), a performer and a teacher of improvisation.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Wellington Church of Scotland, 77 Southpark Avenue, Glasgow, United Kingdom