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

<p dir="ltr">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.