Health, Body and Citizenship in American Culture 3301-KA1535-2ST
This course examines the intersecting discourses of the body and health in American culture. It focuses on selected aspects of social life that pertain to embodied forms of citizenship. These include the disciplining practices relating to physical and mental health, setting the boundaries of gender and racial identities, legal regulations regarding sexuality and reproduction, stigmatization of nonnormative bodies, bodily self-surveillance,as well as managing the body politic in times of an epidemic or a natural disaster. The key questions that the course will address are: What is biopower? How do the disciplinary and regulatory techniques impact the production of individual and collective bodies? If the bodies are objects and vehicles of power, what is the relationship between individuals’ self-surveillance and self-discipline and the broader historical process of nation formation? How is the metaphor of the body deployed in discussions of social and political life? If medical and (pseudo)scientific breakthroughs and developments produce power/knowledge about bodies (Foucault), how do these new languages inform the Americans’ collective self-examination and self-understanding?
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Students will be able to:
K_W01 Identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of literary and culture studies pertaining to health, the body, biopower and citizenship within the humanities
K_W02 Describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary and cultural studies research relating to health, the body, biopower and citizenship within English studies
K_W04 Characterize on an advanced level the principles of research design in literary and culture studies with special focus on the application of methods and tools pertaining to health, the body, biopower and citizenship in formulating research problems
K_W05 Identify the notions and principles pertinent to intellectual property and copyright
Abilities
Students are able to:
K_U01 Apply advanced terminology and notions pertinent to the discipline (literary studies, culture and religion studies) relating to the concepts of the healthy body, biopower and citizenship
K_U02 Apply advanced research methodology within literary and culture studies and English studies, relating to health, the body, biopower and citizenship, respecting ethical norms and copyright law
K_U03 Apply knowledge obtained during the course of studies to account for and solve a problem related to the theme of health, the body, biopower and citizenship, thereby completing a research task related to the discipline literary studies and/or culture and religion studies
K_U04 Analyze linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena connected to the theorizations of the body, citizenship, biopower and health, and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level
K_U05 Discern alternative methodological paradigms within a discipline pertaining to health, the body, biopower, and citizenship
K_U06 Find information in various sources and critically assess its usefulness for research related to the topic of the MA project
Social competences
Students are ready to:
K_K02 Apply knowledge and skills obtained during the course of studies to undertake lifelong learning, as well as personal and professional development
K_K03 Take responsibility for performing one’s professional duties, with due respect for the work of others,obey and develop the ethical norms in professional and academic settings related to the disciplines included on the curriculum of English studies
K_K04 Assess critically one’s own knowledge and skills related to the studies
K_K06 Value cultural heritage and cultural diversity as well as individual opinions
Assessment criteria
mini-lecture
analysis and interpretation of primary and secondary sources
discussion
written assignments
collaborative project
3 absences allowed
Bibliography
Fragmenty z następujących pozycji:
Apel, Thomas A. Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds. Enlightened Minds. Stanford UP, 2016.
Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Biehler, Dawn Day. Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches and Rats. University of Washington Press 2013.
Blackman, Lisa. The Body. Berg, 2008.
Boyer, Paul. Urban Masses and Moral Order in America 1820-1920. Harvard University Press, 1997 (1978).
Carter, Julian B. The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940. Duke University Press, 2007.
Dr Holt’s The Care and Feeding of Children, 1894
Dr Spock, Baby and Child Care, 1946
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Random House, 1975.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979. Ed. Senellart, Michel. Trans. Burchell, Graham. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Friedan, Betty. Feminine Mystique, W.W. Norton, 1963.
Inda, Jonathan Xavier. Racial Prescriptions. Routledge, 2016.
Lasch, Christopher The Culture of Narcissism. American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, W.W. Norton,1979.
Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. Trans. Trump, Erik Frederick. New York University Press, 2011.
Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt. The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin Books, 2019.
Mead, Margaret, Coming of Age in Samoa. William Morrow and Co., 1928,
Metzl, Jonathan. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Beacon Press, 2010.
Muir, John excerpt from “The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West,” 1898.
Nelson, Alondra: The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations and Reconciliation after the Genome. Beacon Press, 2016.
Pettegrew, John. Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890-1920. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Rose, Nikolas. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton UP, 2007.
Shilling, Chris. The Body: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2016.
Stoler, Ann Laura, ed. Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Duke UP, 2006.
Strong, Paschal N. The Pestilence, a Punishment for Public Sins: A Sermon Preached in the Middle Dutch Church, Nov. 17, 1822, after the cessation of the yellow fever which prevailed in New-York in 1822. New York: H. Sage, 1833. Harvard University - Andover-Harvard Theological Library.
Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Doubleday, 2006.
Wray, Matt. Not Quite White. White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness. Duke UP, 2006.
Wylie, Philip. Generation of Vipers, Dalkey Archive Press, 1943
Artykuły naukowe:
Biermann, Christine. “Securing Forests from the Scourge of Chestnut Blight: The Biopolitics of Nature and Nation,” Geoforum 75, 2016, pp. 210-219.
Treichler, Paula A. “AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification.” October 43 (Winter 1987): 31-70. Special Issue on AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. Ed. Douglas Crimp.
Filmy
Marriage for Moderns - an educational film, (1954)
Homesman, dir. Tommy Lee Jones (2014)
Kinsey Report, dir. Bill Condon (2004)
Rebel without a Cause, dir. Nicholas Ray (1955)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: