Students can now study breasts, academically

From Keeping up with the Kardashians to breast cancer campaigns, students are surrounded by breast narratives. Now the Department of Women and Gender Studies is offering a course that covers such topics.

The new U of A course focuses solely on breasts, from their use in classifying mammals to contemporary issues such as breast augmentation. Dorothy Woodman, a contract instructor with a background in breast cancer, designed the course.

“(The idea is) to focus on the breast just as a breast,” Woodman said. “Diseased, healthy, present, erased, trans bodies, people choosing to remove their breasts, people choosing to have breasts implanted and to have surgery to get breasts.”

Though some students might be skeptical of an entire course devoted to breasts, Woodman said she plans to cover a variety of topics. The course explores how attitudes towards breasts change — or stay the same — over time.

One topic that will be covered is the sacred breast present in Christian depictions of Mary providing the baby Jesus with spiritual milk. Another is the erotic breast — students will think about who decides when women can reveal their breasts and to whose benefit, Woodman said.

“It’s really interesting how this single part of a person’s body has such intense focus and such intense surveillance about what’s appropriate (and) what’s not,” she said.

Breasts allow for discussions of inequality including sexism and racism, Woodman said. The ideal breast has historically been seen as a white, young, round, and often virginal, which excludes many breasts including those of colour, old age, and those that have lactated, she explained.

Woodman said she’ll also cover how breasts have been and are used as a political tool to control women.

“We look at how in a sense women are surveyed and under surveillance, how they’re disciplined at the site of their breast, how that becomes a very useful way of controlling women,” she explained. “But we also look at how women (look) at their breasts as sites of their own power, as ways of getting agency.”

Woodman said the increased power to choose can be seen in breast augmentation and breast cancer reconstruction, which is a complex social issue worthy of more discussion. She added that it’s hard to discern whether women choose breast augmentation for themselves, or because of social pressure.

“Something we have to be careful about … is about not making categorical statements,” she said. “(For example), ‘All augmentation is wrong, all reconstruction is wrong,’”

Woodman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 just after starting her PhD in post-colonial theory and literature. After going through a mastectomy, chemo-therapy and radiation therapy, she became interested in cancer culture and wrote her dissertation on breast cancer.

“What I want from the students … to just go out and realize how many forces are in play,” Woodman said. “(I want them to assess) how complicated things are, and to … recognize these forces that are still happening now.”