AMST253 - Disease and Difference: The Body in Visual Culture

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Academic Year 2001/2002

Disease and Difference: The Body in Visual Culture
AMST 253 SP

Crosslistings:
AFAM 253
WMST 262

This interdisciplinary course will examine the long-standing visual linkage of disease with national, ethnic, racial, sexual, and gender differences. We will begin by exploring the status of the body in early experiments with photography and cinema, considering the relationship between technologies of representation and processes of social control such as colonialism, eugenics, and criminal phrenology. Next, we will examine mid-twentieth-century medical, scientific, and ethnographic films designed t o investigate and contain the body of the "Other," comparing them with more recent HIV/AIDS education videos. Finally, we will consider the fantasies and anxieties of bodily difference articulated through scenarios of invasion in science fiction cinema a nd internet discourse. The visual texts will be viewed in relation to the history of global migrations, the rhetoric of national identity, and social theories of "normalcy," hygiene, and pathology.

MAJOR READINGS

Michel Foucault, THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEDICAL PERCEPTION (1963) (1994)
Alan Kraut, SILENT TRAVELERS: GERMS, GENES, AND THE "IMMIGRANT MENACE" (1994)
Fatimah Tobing Rony, THE THIRD EYE: RACE, CINEMA, AND ETHNOGRAPHIC SPECTACLE (1996)
Lisa Cartwright, SCREENING THE BODY: TRACING MEDICINE'S VISUAL CULTURE (1995)
Trinh T. Ming-Ha, WOMAN, NATIVE, OTHER: WRITING POSTCOLONIALITY AND FEMINISM (1989)
Parker, Russo, et al, eds., NATIONALISMS AND SEXUALITIES (1992)
Sander Gilman, DIFFERENCE AND PATHOLOGY: STEREOTYPES OF SEXUALITY, RACE, AND MADNESS (1986)
Cindy Patton, INVENTING AIDS (1991)
Linda Williams, HARD CORE: POWER, PLEASURE, AND THE "FRENZY OF THE VISIBLE" (1989)
Martin Pernick, THE BLACK STORK: EUGENICS AND THE DEATH OF "DEFECTIVE" BABIES IN AMERICAN MEDICINE AND MOTION PICTURES SINCE 1915 (1996)
Anne McClintock, IMPERIAL LEATHER: RACE, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN THE COLONIAL CONTEST (1995)
Lutz & Collins, READING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (1993)
Kolko, Nakamura, Rodman, eds., RACE IN CYBERSPACE (2000)
Treichler, Cartwright, Penley, eds., THE VISIBLE WOMAN: IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES, GENDER AND SCIENCE (1998).

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Two papers, 5-7 pg.
One paper, 10-15 pg.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

Attendance, participation in discussions, attendance at screenings.

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: NONE Grading Mode: Graded

Prerequisites: NONE

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Ostherr,Kirsten

Times: ..T.R.. 01:10PM-02:30PM; ...W... 07:00PM-09:00PM; Location: CAMS 3

Reserved Seats: (Total Limit: 15)

SR. major: 7 Jr. major: 8

SR. non-major: Jr. non-major: SO: FR:

Special Attributes:

Curricular Renewal: Reading Non-Verbal Texts

Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-19-2002