ABSTRACT
In the U.S. in 1980, the Commission on the Humanities stated, “Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human?” (p. 1). Historical discourse around curricular humanities English (see Chubb, 1902; Corson, 1895) describes the movement at the turn of the twentieth century for English teachers to train students’ minds and shape their spirits, not necessarily to master a subject but to master themselves (Brass, 2013). If the pedagogical goal to keep students on the straight-and-narrow seems like a disembodied spiritual process, Foucault (1975/1977) reminded readers that there is no shaping of the mind and soul without the body and that no persons, including the teachers of those students, are exempt from institutional mechanisms focused on the body. This chapter will explore the material body in secondary English classrooms, specifically how the education of students’ minds, in Foucauldian fashion, is linked to the policing of teachers’ bodies as they enact sound English pedagogy. Stories from three women secondary English teachers show how the English discipline shapes teachers’ embodied pedagogies, and thus creates tensions in creating the embodiment of a “proper” woman teacher.
