| Medicine, Bodies, and
Power Sarah Lawrence College (ANTH-3177-R) Spring 2003 Instructor: David Valentine Class time: M/Th 11:05am - 12:30pm, Dudley Lawrence 04 Office: Sheffield 05 Fall class dates: January 23 - May 15, 2003 Phone: 914.395.2363 email: dvalenti@mail.slc.edu Course Description: "Medicine, Bodies, and Power" seeks to understand and explain the relationships among illness, health, healing systems, the human body, bodily practices, and broader systems of social power. Taking an anthropological and cross-cultural perspective, the basic premise of the course is that an understanding of disease, health, the body, and embodied practices requires an understanding of the contexts of social power within which they are experienced, and the cultural meanings which make sense of them. The course aims to build from an understanding of how cultural ideas about health and the body, and the stratified nature of health care provision, shape people's experience, to an understanding that even physical experiences such as pain and suffering are also culturally mediated and politically located. Though Western medicine focuses on the biological processes of illness and disease (both physical and mental), this course aims to show how all systems of healing and embodied experiences are culturally located. At the same time, the globalization of Western ideas (both medical and non-medical) also requires us to think about the ways that different cultural systems come up against one another in terms of approaches to disease, reproduction, sexuality, and bodily processes, issues which engage contemporary anthropological questions about power and meaning. We will focus on a range of practices and understandings about the body: from medical diagnoses to tattooing, from cultural understandings of body size to discourses about organ donation, and from the moral discourse of body appearances to the search for the biological "causes" of homosexuality. All of these topics, however, are united by a focus on the cultural organization of medical systems, understandings of the body, and bodily experience itself. In the spring semester, we will focus in particular on how reproduction and sexuality become sites for medical intervention, and the ways that the internationalization of biomedicine produces complex results at the local level. Speakers' Series This course is organized alongside a speakers' series. Students are expected to attend three pubic talks at the college in the fall, and three in the spring. The schedule for this series will be available at the beginning of the semester, and attendance is compulsory. Please ensure that you organize your schedules accordingly. Assigned Texts Please note that as an "intermediate" course, the reading load for this class is relatively heavy, and you should consider the requirements and reading load carefully before you sign up for this class. A course reading packet is available at the library, and from me should you want to borrow it to make copies. As well as the reading packet, the following books will be needed, all of which are on reserve at the library and available for purchase in the bookstore: Bordo, Susan 1999 The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. Farrar Straus & Giroux. Jackson, Jean E. 1999 Camp Pain: Talking With Chronic Pain Patients. University of Pennsylvania Press. Rapp, Rayna 1999 Testing women, testing the fetus: the social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. Policies and Requirements Course and Conference Requirements Class work for the semester will consist of the following formal projects: 1. Three 5-6 page papers, due in class on days noted in syllabus below. 2. Two mini-research projects, to be discussed in class. Class work is due in class on the days noted in the syllabus below. I do not grant extensions other than for exceptional circumstances. If you believe you are embroiled in such a circumstance, I expect you to request an extension at least a day before the paper is due; DO NOT come to class without completed work unless I have granted you an extension. I am always willing to look at drafts of your work up until two days before the due date, which you may email me. I will not, however, accept emailed versions of your papers. Conferences I expect that you will complete the tasks we have agreed on for your conference work prior to your conference. Policy on Lateness and Attendance Please pay particular attention to the following: you are, naturally, expected to attend all classes and conferences associated with this class. It is expected that if you have to miss a class for a valid reason (such as illness or family emergency), you will inform me prior to the class, or as soon after as is possible. Since this is a seminar, your attendance and participation in class discussions is a central part of the course. I will take attendance in the first ten minutes of class. If you arrive late for class, you will not have the opportunity to sign the attendance sheet, and this will be noted as an absence. Please note the attendance policy: more than two unexcused absences will result in reduced credit for this course. Course Outline 1. Introduction to the Spring Semester (1/23/03) Part 1: Man Trouble 2. The Male Body I (1/27/03) Reading: Bordo, Susan 1999 The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 3. The Male Body II (1/30/03) Reading: Bordo, Susan 1999 The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 4. The Male Body III (2/3/03) Reading: Bordo, Susan 1999 The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 5. Every Sperm is Sacred I (2/6/03) Reading: Hanson, Allan F. 2001 Donor insemination: eugenic and feminist implications. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15(3):287-311. Tober, Diane 2001 Semen as gift, semen as goods: reproductive workers and the market in altruism. Body and Society 7(2-3):137-160. 6. Every Sperm is Sacred II (2/10/03) Reading: Luoma, Jon R. 1999 Shooting blanks. GQ, March: 191-197. Groopman, Jerome 2002 Hormones for men. New Yorker , July 29:34-38. McDade, Thomas 1996 Prostates and profits: the social construction of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia in men. Medical Anthropology 17:1-22. Part 2: Perverts and Monsters 7. The History of Perverse Bodies I (2/13/03) **PAPER 1 DUE IN CLASS** Reading: Weeks, Jeffrey, 1985 Sexuality and its discontents: meanings, myths and modern sexualities. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (chapter 4) Terry, Jennifer 1995 Anxious slippages between "us" and "them:" a brief history of the scientific search for homosexual bodies. in Deviant bodies: critical perspectives on difference in science and popular culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 8. The History of Perverse Bodies II (2/17/03) Reading: Irvine, Judith M. 1995 Regulated passions: the invention of inhibited sexual desire and sexual addiction . In Deviant bodies: critical perspectives on difference in science and popular culture. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 9. Intersexuality I (2/20/03) Reading: FILM: Hermaphrodites Speak Chase, Cheryl 1998 Hermaphrodites with attitude: mapping the emergence of intersex political activism. GLQ 4(2):189-211. Valentine, David and Riki Anne Wilchins 1997 One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender, Genitals and Hermaphrodites with Attitude. Social Text 52/53:215-222. 10. Intersexuality II (2/24/03) Reading: Dreger, Alice Domurat 1995 Doubtful Sex: The Fate of the Hermaphrodite in Victorian England. Victorian studies 38(3):335- * 2/26/02: Guest Speaker – Alice Dreger * 11. Transgender Bodies? Gay Bodies? (2/27/03) Reading: Feder, Ellen 1997 Disciplining the family: the case of gender identity disorder. Philosophical Studies 85:195-211. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 1993 How to bring your kids up gay. In Fear of a queer planet: queer politics and social theory. Michael Warner (ed). Pp.69-81. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 12. Homosexuality, Masculinity, and Gender Identity (3/3/03) Reading: Oetomo, Dédé 2000 Masculinity in Indonesia: genders, sexualities, and identities in a changing society. In Framing the sexual subject : the politics of gender,sexuality, and power. Richard Parker, Regina Maria Barbosa, and Peter Aggleton (eds.) Pp. 46-59. Berkeley: University of California Press. Part 3: "The Woman in the Body" 13. Amniocentesis I (3/6/03) Reading: Rapp, Rayna 1999 Testing women, testing the fetus: the social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. 14. Amniocentesis II (3/10/03) Reading: Rapp, Rayna 1999 Testing women, testing the fetus: the social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. * 3/11/02: Guest Speaker – Charles Zerner * 15. Amniocentesis III (3/13/03) Reading: Rapp, Rayna 1999 Testing women, testing the fetus: the social impact of amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge. Spring Break March 15- March 30 16. Menopause (3/31/03) **PAPER 2 DUE IN CLASS** Reading: Lock, Margaret 1993 The politics of mid-life menopause: ideolgies for the second sex in North America and Japan. In Knowledge, power and practice: the anthropology of medicine and everyday life. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock (eds.) pp. 330-363. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zeserson, Jan Morgan 2001 How Japanese women talk about hot flushes: implications for menopause research. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15(2):189-205 17. Sexual Slavery, Sexual Rights I (4/3/03) Reading: Human Rights Watch/Asia 1995 Rape for profit: trafficking of Nepali girls and women to India's brothels. New York: Human Rights Watch. Asia Watch and the Women's Rights Project nd A modern form of slavery: trafficking of Burmese women and girls into brothels in Thailand. New York: Human Rights Watch (selections). 18. Sexual Slavery, Sexual Rights II (4/7/03) Reading: Petchesky, Rosalind P. 2000 Sexual rights: inventing a concept, mapping an international practice. In Framing the sexual subject : the politics of gender,sexuality, and power. Richard Parker, Regina Maria Barbosa, and Peter Aggleton (eds.) Pp. 81-103. Berkeley: University of California Press. * 4/9/02: Guest speaker – Carole Vance * 19. Controlling Reproduction I (4/10/03) Reading: Rasmussen, Susan J. 1994 Female sexuality, social reproduction, and the politics of medical intervention in Niger: Kel Ewey Tuareg perspectives. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 18(4):433-462. Jeffery, Roger and Patricia M. Jeffery 1993 Traditional birth attendants in rural north India: the social organization of childbearing. In Knowledge, power and practice: the anthropology of medicine and everyday life. Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock (eds.) pp. 7-31. Berkeley: University of California Press. 20. Controlling Reproduction II (4/14/03) Reading: Morsy, Soheir A. 1995 Deadly reproduction among Egyptian women: maternal mortality and the medicalization of population control. In Conceiving the new world order: the global politics of reproduction. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (eds). pp. 162-176. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pearce, Tola Olu 1995 Women's reproductive practices and biomedicine: cultural conflicts and transformations in Nigeria. In In Conceiving the new world order: the global politics of reproduction. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (eds). pp. 195-208. Berkeley: University of California Press. Part 4: Pain and Suffering 21. Bodies in Pain (4/17/03) Reading: Groopman, Jerome 2000 Hurting all over. New Yorker, November 13:78-90. Good, Byron J. 1992 A body in pain: the making of a world of chronic pain. In Pain as human experience: an anthropological perspective. Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good et al (eds). Pp.29-48. Berkeley: University of California Press. 22. Camp Pain I (4/21/03) Reading: Jackson, Jean E. 1999 Camp Pain: Talking With Chronic Pain Patients. University of Pennsylvania Press. 23. Camp Pain II (4/24/03) Reading: Jackson, Jean E. 1999 Camp Pain: Talking With Chronic Pain Patients. University of Pennsylvania Press. 24. Camp Pain III (4/28/03) **PAPER 3 DUE IN CLASS** Reading: Jackson, Jean E. 1999 Camp Pain: Talking With Chronic Pain Patients. University of Pennsylvania Press. 25. Torture (5/1/03) Reading: Asad, Talal 1997 On Torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. In Social suffering. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock (eds.) Pp. 285-308. Berkeley: University of California Press. Conclusion: the Moral Body 26. Wellness and Morality (5/5/03) Reading: Conrad, Peter 1994 Wellness as virtue: morality and the pursuit of health. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 18:385-401. 27. Workshop I (5/8/03) Conference paper workshop 28. Workshop II (5/12/03) Conference paper workshop/Course Review |
