SYLLABUS PAGE Week
1: Why Women and Health?
Reading 1: Byllye Avery,
"Breathing Life Into Ourselves: The Evolution of the National Black
Women's Health Project," in Evelyn White, The Black Women's Health
Book
Reading 2: "The Politics
of Women's Health and Medical Care," The New Our Bodies, Ourselves
(Simon and Schuster, 1984): 555-97.
Reading 3: "La Sufrida: Contradiction of Acculturation and Gender in
Latina Health," in Adele Clarke and Virginia Olesen, Revisioning
Women, Health, and Healing (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Assignment: Join the listserv
and introduce yourself to other class members. Tell us who you are and a
little about how you got interested in this course.Drawing on the
readings, write about 150-250 words on the question: How are women's
health issues different from men's, and how are women's issues different
from each other's, depending on race?
 This is hard!
How do I join
the listserv?
Week 2-4: Mental Health,
Violence, and Substance Abuse
One important health issue facing women is substance abuse. It is,
directly or indirectly, the factor most likely to be responsible for women
going to jail or prison; it is often a significant reason why mothers lose
their children to CPS or other state agencies, and often leads to other
health problems, from AIDS to homelessness to cirrhosis. But what are the
factors that lead up to the epidemic of substance abuse among women? This
section of the course will examine two common precursors to substance
abuse: untreated mental health difficulties, and a history of violence,
particularly sexual assault and incest. According to the F.B.I., one-third
of women and girls in the U.S. are victimized by sexual abuse and incest.
Many substance abuse counselors and mental health clinicians will argue
that most or all of the women they see--and most or all of women in
prison--are survivors of sexual violence.
(readings will be drawn from
the following list, chosen by the instructor):
Historical Piece: Ehrenreich and English, "Complaints and
Disorders"
Paula Panzer and Mindy
Fullilove, "Belinda's Puzzle: Assembling the Pieces of an
Illness," American Journal of Psychiatry 154:
5 (May 1997): 677-681.
from Kate Millet, The Loony
Bin Trip
Mindy Fullilove, "Crack 'hos
and Skeezers: Traumatic Experiences of Women Crack Users"
from Dorothy Roberts, Shattered
Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Basic, 2002).
Judith Herman, Trauma and
Recovery: The aftermath of violence--from domestic abuse to political
terror. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Allan Young, A Description of
How Ideology Shapes Knowledge of a Mental Disorder (PTSD)
from Ana Castillo, The
Mixquiahuala Letters
This is hard!
How
do I read this stuff?
Assignments: Weeks 2 and 3--listserv
response
Week 4--first two-page
paper, sent via email, written in Microsoft
Word or another word processing program. If you don't have access to a
word processing program, contact the instructor.
This is hard!
You want me to write a WHAT?!!
Week 5-7: Reproductive and
Sexual Health, STDs
Birth control, sterilization, abortion, reproductive technologies,
"crack babies," and fetal alcohol syndrome--the politics of who
gets to control women's reproduction is always hotly political. This
section of the course will begin to explore questions of reproductive and
sexual health.
Historical Piece:`Empowered
Caretakers: A historical Perspective on the Roles of Granny Midwives in
Rural Alabama,' Sheila P. Davis and Cora A. Ingram
or, from Sharla Fett, Working
Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Plantations (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me,
Ultima
Krieger and Fee, Women's
Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public
Health (Baywood, 1994).
Marcia Inhorn,
"Introduction," Quest for Conception, Gender, Infertility,
and Egyptian Medical Traditions,
`Barriers to Birth Control Use
among Hispanic Teenagers: Providers' Perspectives,' Katherine Fennelly
from Michael Dorris, The
Broken Cord
Jane Erikson, "Doctors
Mislabel defects: Fetal Alcohol Misdiagnosed"( November 27,
1995): 1A.
Riedmann, A 1993: Science
that Colonizes: critique of fertility studies in Africa. Temple
University Press.
Andrea
Smith, "Better Dead than Pregnant: The Colonization of Native Women's
Reproductive Health" in Jael Silliman and Anannya
Bhattacharjee, Policing the National Body (Boston: South End Press,
2002)
Michael Sullivan DeFine,
"A History Governmentally Coerced Sterilization: The Plight of the
Native American Woman"
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9118/mike2.html
H. Eugene Hoyme, et al.
"Accuracy of Diagnosis of Alcohol Related Brith Defects by
Non-Medical Professionals in a Native American Population" Proceedings
of the Greenwood Genetic Center 13:88 (1994): 88.
Assignments: Weeks 5 and 6--listserv
response
Week 7--begin work on a web site on a political movement that addresses
women's health. Read through the instructions about how
to create a web site, write one paragraph about reproductive health,
and post one link to another web site. Send the instructor the URL for
your web site.
Week 8-10: Weight, Exercise,
and Body Image
Women and girls are under a lot of pressure to look a certain way,
to exercise (though not to participate competitively in sports!), to diet.
One effect of all this pressure is the opposite of health: weight that
goes up and down, unhealthy eating habits, and negative feelings about
their bodies that can cause women to behave in ever more unhealthy ways.
This section of the course will look at the ways agribusiness, the diet
industry, and fast food have created the unhealthy American diet, and how
the pressure to "shape" the body has changed over time.
Historical Piece: from Joan
Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls
from Mimi Nichter, Fat
Talk
Eugenia Kaw, "Medicalization
of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery"
Social Science and Medicine
J. Urla and A. Swedlun,
"The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of
the Feminine Body in Popular Culture,"
Susan Bordo, "Reading the
Slender Body," in Body/Politics: Women and the Discourse of
Science, Routledge, 1990, 83-112
Eric Schlosser, "Global
Realization," in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
All-American Meal (New York: HarperCollins, 2002): 225-252.
Ad
Nauseam campaign
Assignments: weekly listserv responses
for web site assignment: identify a political movement related to health
and health care that interests you. Find at least two web sites on the
'net that pertain to that political movement, and post them to your new
web site. Write a paragraph about the political movement, post the links,
and send the URL for your web site to the listserv by the end of week 10.
Week 11-13: Chronic and
Terminal Illness
Women are more likely than men to have a chronic illness or to be a
caretaker for someone else who does. They are also more likely to be
understood by their doctors as "noncompliant,"as
hypochondriacs who don't really have much wrong with them, or as failing
to care for
their children.
Historical Piece: Emily Abel,
Emily. “A ‘Terrible and Exhausting’ Struggle: Family Caregiving
During the Transformation of Medicine,” LEAVITT, Chapter 30.
Dealing with Different Health
Systems: from Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall
Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the
Collision of Two Cultures (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux,
1998)
Audre Lorde, The Cancer
Journals
Clare Williams "Doing
Health, Doing Gender: Teenagers, Diabetes and Asthma"
from Mama Might Be Better
Off Dead
Assignments:
Week 11--second two page paper. Question will be posted to listserv.
Weeks 12, 13--listserv responses.
Week 14-16: Environment and
Health
Poverty is one of the most reliable indicators of ill-health. Why is that
true? This section of the course will examine questions of environment and
health, from questions of stress to toxic dumping in working-class
communities to nuclear waste and the presence of pesticides in breast
milk.
Helen Epstein, "Ghetto Miasma: Enough to Make you Sick?" New
York Times, Sunday Magazine, (October 12, 2003): 75.
D. Cohen et al. "Broken
Windows and the Risk of Gonorrhea" American Journal of Public
Health 90 (2000); 230-36.
Confronting Environmental
Racism, Robert Bullard (Edt), Chapter 11, `Global Threats to People of
Color,'pgs.179-194.
Critical Resistance, "Prisons:
New Forms of Environmental Racism"
http://www.criticalresistance.org/media/CR.enviracism.pdf
Sandra Steingraber, "View
from the Top" (ch. 12) Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to
Motherhood (Cambridge: Perseus, 2001)
Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge:
An Unnatural History of Family and Place (New York: Pantheon, 1991).
David Pellow and Lisa Sun Hee
Park, The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant
Workers, ch. 6 (New York: NYU, 2002).
local pieces on toxic waste:
Keith Bagwell, "New Soil Contamination Found in Area Near D-M," Arizona
Daily Star . Tucson,
Ariz.: Aug 24, 1995. pg. 1.B
"DEQ looks at Updating Superfund list"Arizona Daily
Star. Tucson, Ariz.: Dec 10, 1996. pg. 2.B
"Moore seeks D-M files on all purchases of TCE"Arizona Daily
Star. Tucson, Ariz.: Mar 1, 1995. pg. 2.A
"Hidden toxic mess Cleaning up closed bases will eat up
savings" Arizona Daily Star. Tucson,
Ariz.: Jul 8, 1991. pg. 12.A
Assignments:
Weekly listserv responses
Finish web site assignment,
Week 17: Political Movements--web
site assignment due!
Readings: student's web sites
Assignment: post listserv response about each other's web sites.
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