Honors Collegium 65W: BodyMind Literacy

Honors Collegium 65W

BodyMind Literacy

Enrollment: Instructor Consent. Please email Professor Mattenson (mattenson@humnet.ucla.edu) for an application during winter quarter.

Requirements fulfilled: General Education — Philosophical & Linguistic Analysis (Arts & Humanities) and Writing II

Course Description: Experiential and interdisciplinary course which promotes the integration of body and mind in an educational context. How can a more embodied pedagogical approach support a mindful, comprehensive education? How can re-theorizing the bodymind help us reconstruct it? How can we successfully interrogate our own assumptions about body and mind in order to generate healthy attitudes and behaviors? Course focuses on writing process and includes guest speakers, practicum sessions, a high level of student engagement and interaction, and movement-based exercises. Limited to 20 students.

Lauri Mattenson

Lauri Mattenson is a Senior Lecturer with UCLA Writing Programs. As a member of the UCLA Prison Education Program and PEP Faculty Advisory Board, Lauri advocates for prison reform and teaches writing courses for incarcerated adults and students in juvenile halls, work for which she was honored with the 2025 Campus Champion Award. She is a 2025-26 Faculty Fellow for the UCLA Dialogue Across Difference Initiative, and was awarded the 2020 Honors Division Eugen Weber Teaching Award for “a distinctive interdisciplinary approach to learning, promoting healthy intellectual exchange, and dedication to the student experience.” Publications include LA Times and Chronicle of Higher Education, among others

http://www.laurimattenson.com/

Q & A

What is your home department at UCLA? Writing Programs

How long have you been teaching your HC seminar?
Since 2003, and then the course was renamed in 2014. I update the curriculum each year.

What is your favorite part about teaching this HC seminar? It is deeply soul-satisfying to see how students embrace and appreciate this curriculum. It tends to facilitate individual growth and highlight our shared humanity.

What do you find to be the most compelling about the subject matter of this seminar? In school, most of us have learned to feed the mind—and ignore the body. When we integrate the two, we learn differently—and live differently.

What are the learning objectives for this course?

Understand “mind” as an emerging outcome of the interplay between Brain-Body-Environment
Experience learning as a physically embodied process
Interrogate our assumptions about the body and mind in an educational context
Create a more mindful approach to learning
Construct meaning using multiple approaches: reflective, participatory, experiential, embodied, investigative (learners are actively engaged in posing questions)
Think for yourself and make creative choices; explore/assert your opinions in person and on the page; respond to the opinions of other students in productive, respectful ways
Read texts attentively and critically; interact with authors’ ideas and apply them to your own lives, ideas, and examples
Develop your skills at each stage of the writing process: planning, composing, revising, editing
Work collaboratively to create a community of writers/thinkers

Student Feedback

Honors Collegium 65W: BodyMind Literacy

“The professor is the most engaging teacher I have had at UCLA; she went above and beyond to help me with my writing and speaking skills. I have never had a professor who would look at my essay drafts over the weekend and multiple times before submitting. I have also never had a teacher that created an open an honest environment that facilitated sharing. It’s even more impressive considering the online nature of the courses this quarter. I learned so much about my mind-body connection, lessons which I will take with me in my future career. I am immensely grateful to Professor for all she has done; this course has been life-changing. As I write this evaluation, I am racking my head for any weaknesses that this course may have. I can honestly say that there are none; it is honestly one in a kind with a one in a kind professor. Thank you!”

“I could not overstate the fact that Lauri Mattenson is one of the best professors that I have ever had at UCLA. Not only was she energetic, honest, funny, intelligent, creative, and knew how to teach effectively, but she cared so much about each and every one of us. She was not only a teacher, but a counselor and mentor too. She made sure we knew she was available for us if we ever needed anything, whether by email or appointment, and she always followed through. Furthermore, the immense time and energy she put into everything we did was unmistakable. Each class was structured and purposeful, each conversation open and stimulating, and each assignment unique and insightful. The things I learned in this class because of Lauri will stay with me far beyond my graduation from UCLA, and I think that is something every teacher strives for, but few accomplish. Lauri accomplished this and then some.”

“I believe that anyone taking this course would benefit from it. The readings were challenging and eye-opening…and this class has shown me different ways of thinking about my bodymind and how I can view myself as a more comprehensive, full human being.”

“Lauri frames the course in an exploratory, inquisitive, purposeful manner, which guides us to develop our own identities, let alone rhetorical skills, through the u se of embodied learning. The lessons are engaging conversations amongst the students, facilitated by her. She provides excellent texts and encourages us to find our own mind-body connections using the ideas of the text, which is more than any professor has ever taught me. She teaches to better us as individuals, not only as writing students, and I appreciate her sincerity and dedication to her students. I have learned more about my cognitive processes, learning abilities and preferences, and my synchronous body-mind system, and this self-discovery is a joy that I will always remember as I leave UCLA. This amazing course deserves to be led by a professor as accomplished and passionate as only Lauri is, and my one criticism is that the course is not offered enough times during the year!”