Gender, Ethnicity and Health

Dr. Kathryn Oths

Spring 2002

Office :	24D ten Hoor
Office Hours:	Tue/Thur 3-5 or by appt
Telephone:	348-1957
Email:	koths@tenhoor.as.ua.edu

OBJECTIVES:

This course is designed to provide a climate in which to explore in-depth the gendered, ethnic, cultural, and class dimensions that underlie the patterning of disease and illness worldwide, with special attention to the long-term health effects of racism, poverty and sexism. After an introduction to the fundamental anthropological understandings of gender and ethnicity--in terms of their biological and, especially, cultural constructions, four primary topics will be addressed:

a) the complex of mental illness/homelessness/alcoholism/drug abuse

b) AIDS

c) bodily health and image

d) reproductive health.

Topics will be discussed based on assigned journal articles, books and films. Emphasis will be placed on the subtle interactions among these seemingly distinct illness processes, as well as the political-economic conditions and the sociocultural constructions of gender and ethnicity that produce and maintain them. A seminar format will be employed to allow a free interchange of ideas among all students.

GRADING:

Class participation:

This course is taught in a seminar format; therefore all students will be expected to actively participate in all class sessions. Students are expected to have read and outlined all materials prior to class and come prepared to discuss the main concepts. Graduate students will be assigned additional readings. Quality, not quantity, of opinions is what counts. Students should endeavor to limit their contributions to a range of approximately 4 to 8 comments per class in order to allow all students the chance to participate. Class participation will be evaluated by the professor after each class period. Feedback on class performance will be given to each student privately by the end of the 8^th week of classes. At the end of the semester, the Peer-Prof method will also be used to assess participation. This method entails each student confidentially rating the participation of all other students on a scale of 1 to 5. A good peer score may raise, but will not lower, the class participation grade of an individual student. Additionally, groups of graduate and undergraduate students will be required to lead class discussion one time on the topic of their choice. Class participation accounts for 50% of the grade.

Written Assignments:

The other half (50%) of the grade will be based on a term paper that will be due at the end of the semester. The topic will be chosen by the student in collaboration with the professor. Students will turn in a paragraph outlining their topic of interest during week 4, and a revised paragraph by Week 7. Students will discuss their paper topics in class during Week 8 and turn in a detailed outline of the major sections of their paper by Week 10. Paper length is 14 pages for undergraduates and 20 pages for graduate students. At least 14 and 20 original references, respectively, not including those used in class, will be required in the bibliography.

ASSIGNED BOOKS:

1. Terry, J. and J. Urla, 1995 Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture, Indiana University Press,

2. Kelley Johnson 1998 Deinstitutionalising Women: An Ethnographic Study of Institutional Closure, Cambridge U. Press

3. Renaud, M.L. 1997 Women at the Crossroads: A Prostitute Community’s Response to AIDS in Urban Senegal, Gordon and Breach,

4. Nichter, M. 2000 Fat Talk: What Girls and Their Parents Say About Dieting, Harvard University Press

5. Lorber, J. 1997 Gender and the Social Construction of Illness, Sage,

6. Inhorn, M. 1994 Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility and Egyptian Medical Traditions, U of Pennsylvania Press,

ASSIGNED ARTICLES:

All assigned articles—if not found in one of the assigned books—will be available on reserve at Gorgas library.

WEEK, TOPIC & READINGS

Jan. 14 Introduction: Understanding Health

Gender, Race and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of “Hottentot” Women in Europe, 1815-1817,
Fausto-Sterling (Ch. 1, Deviant Bodies)
GRADS: The Mediated Gene: Stories of Gender and Race, Nelkin and Lindee (Ch 14, Dev Bodies)

Jan. 28 Gender Constructions

Gender and the Social Construction of Illness, Judith Lorber
GRADS: Doing Health, Doing Gender: Teenagers, Diabetes and Asthma, Clare Williams

Feb 4 What is “Race”, Really?

Race, Ethnicity and Class, Robert Anderson
Race and Mixed Race, Ranier Spencer
Ethnicity as a Taxonomic Tool, Crews and Bindon
Health in the African-American Community: Accounting for Health Inequalities, William Dressler
GRADS: Beliefs Matter: Cultural Beliefs and the Use of Cervical Cancer-Screening Tests

Feb. 11 Oppression Syndrome: Interactions of Mental Illness, Poverty, Drugs & Violence

Deinstitutionalizing Women, Kelley Johnson
Due: Paragraph on term paper topic

Feb. 18 Oppression Syndrome, cont.

Theatres of Madness, Susan Jahoda (Ch. 9, Deviant Bodies)
The Epidemiology of Homelessness in Black America, Gregg Barak
Toward a (Dys)functional Anthropology of Drinking, Paul Spicer
GRADS: The Impact of Sociocultural Differences on Health, Stephen J. Kunitz
Film: Taylor’s Campaign

Feb. 25 Living with AIDS

Women at the Crossroads, Renaud, M.L.

Mar 4 AIDS, cont.

Sex, Drugs, and Structural Violence: Unraveling the Epidemic Among Poor Women in the United States, Margaret Connors
Illness Narratives: Time, Hope and HIV, Douglas Ezzy
Highway Cowboys, Old Hands, and Christian Truckers: Risk Behavior for HIV Infection Among Long-Haul Truckers in Florida, Dale Stratford, et al.
GRADS: Intravenous Drug Use and HIV Infection in Miami, J. Bryan Page, et al.
Film: Will We Ever Learn?

Due: Revised paragraph on term paper topic

Mar 11 Barbie or Bust?: Cultural Constructions of the Body and Body Image

Fat Talk, Mimi Nichter
*individual feedback on class participation

Mar. 18 Bodies, cont.

The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture, J. Urla and A. Swedlund (Ch. 10, Deviant Bodies)
Hunger as Ideology, Susan Bordo
Body Image Preferences Among Urban African Americans and Whites from Low Income Communities, Diane Becker, et al.
GRADS: Obesity as a Culture Bound Syndrome, Cheryl Rittenbaugh

+++++++++++++++++ Mar. 25 SPRING BREAK +++++++++++++++++++

Apr 1 More Bodies, cont.

Nurturing and Negligence: Working on Others’ Bodies in Fiji, Anne E. Becker
Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery, Eugenia Kaw
Anxious Slippages Between “Us” and “Them”: A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies (Ch. 5, Deviant Bodies)
Film: Woman Being
Due: Outline of Term Paper

April 8 Reproductive Health in the Global Village

Quest for Conception, Marcia Inhorn

April 15 Reproductive and Sexual Health over the Lifecycle

The Hen That Can’t Lay an Egg: Conceptions of Female Infertility in Modern China, Lisa Handwerker (Ch. 13, Deviant Bodies)
Modern Bodies, Modern Minds: Midwifery and Reproductive Change in an African American Community, Gertrude J. Fraser
The Cultural Constructions of the Premenstrual and Menopause Syndromes, Dona Davis
The Politics of Mid-Life and Menopause: Ideologies for the Second Sex in North America and Japan, Margaret Lock
Debilidad: A Biocultural Assessment of an Embodied Andean Illness, Kathryn Oths

April 22 Reproductive and Sexual Health over the Lifecycle, cont.

Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality, Carol Groneman (Ch. 8, Deviant Bodies)
Between Innocence and Safety: Epidemiologic and Popular Constructions of Young People’s Need for Safe Sex, Cindy Patton (Ch. 12, Deviant Bodies)
A Handmaid’s Tale: The Rhetoric of Personhood in American and Japanese Healing of Abortions, Tom Csordas
Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction, Janice Irvine
(Ch. 11, Deviant Bodies)
GRADS: Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Leclerc-Madlala

April 29 Conclusion

Film And the Band Played On
Film Morir Por Amor

*Discuss Term Papers

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