• Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life, New York: Anchor Books Capra F. (1996)
• G. Minati and A. Collen, Introduction to systemics,. Walnut Creek: Eagleye Books (1997)
• K. Ferguson, Stephen Hawking: Quest for a theory of everything,. New York: Bantham Books (1992)
• Lydia Fillingham, Foucault for beginners, New York: Writers and Readers Publishing (1993)
• W. Collinge,The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine, New York: Warner Books

Selected readings will be compiled in a course reader. Textbooks will be available at the Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust St, and on reserve at MacHenry..
 
Course Organization and Requirements
The course will be conducted in a workshop / seminar format. Students will be asked to actively participate in class presentations and discussions, read carefully, and write two short (2 to 3 pages) and one final essay. Readings are to be completed before attending class and films. Three absences will be grounds for being dropped from the course.
 
Course Evaluation
Short essays (two) 35%
Final essay 35%
Class participation and presentation of reading 30%
 

 
Week 1: Systems Theory and the larger context: rethinking the universe, the world and the self
 
Class 1:

• Rdg. Fritjoff Capra: A new scientific understanding of living systems: The web

Of life. The cultural context and the rise of systems thinking (Ch. 1, 2 and 3)
Class 2:

• Rdg. Gianfranco Minati: An introduction to systemics
• Movie screening: Mindwalk

 
Week 2: Principles of change. Lateral thinking and creativity
Class 3:

• Rdg. Paul Watzlawick: Change: Principles of problem formation and problem

resolution. Persistence and change (Preface, ch. 1 and 2)

•  
• Humberto Maturana and Pille Bunell: The Wisdom of Nature

Class 4:

• Rdg. Edward de Bono: Lateral thinking (Ch. 1 and 2)
• Turn in personal essay (what's my understanding of health)

 
Week 3: Quantum physics, world views and paradigm shifts
Foucault: constructing "realities" through power.
Class 5:

• Rdg. Kitty Ferguson: A quest for a theory of everything  
  
• Lydia Alex Fillingham: Foucault for beginners (selected readings: introduction / madness and civilization)  
  
• George Johnson: Science and Religion: Bridging the great divide (NEJM)

Class 6:

• Rdg. Paul Davies: The ghost in the atom. Ch. 1, What is quantum theory?  
  
• Paul Davies: Other worlds. Chapters1 and 2. God does not play dice. / Things are not always what they seem to be.

 
Week 4: Body-mind connection
Class 7:

• Rdg. Dean Ornish: Love and Survival: The scientific basis for the healing power of

intimacy. Ch. 1 and 2
Class 8:

•  
• Abraham Maslow: The farther reaches of human nature. Part I: Health and Pathology

(Ch. 1, 2 and 3)

• Turn in critical response to selected class material (2 to 3 page essay)

  
 
Week 5: The educational role of the health professions: challenging concepts in health education
Class 9:

• Rdg. Abraham Maslow: The farther reaches of human nature. Part IV: Education (Ch. 12 and 13)

Class 10:

• Rdg. June Lowenberg. Caring and Responsibility: The crossroads between holistic

practice and traditional medicine. Ch: 2, The new model
 
Week 6: Alternative, complementary, or integrative?
 
Diabetes as a model: An introduction to chronic disease
Class 11:

• Rdg. William Collinge: The american holistic association complete guide to

alternative medicine (selected readings)

•  
• Marcia Angel: Alternative medicine: The risks of untested and unregulated remedies

 
Class 12:

• Rdg. Claudia Chaufan: Diabetes in a nutshell  
  
• American Diabetes Association: Diabetes Control and Complications trial (in reader)  
  
• Catherine Feste and Robert Anderson: From philosophy to practice  
  
• Tracee Simon: The "good" diabetic  
  
• Betty Blackenridge & Richard Rubin: Sweet Kids (selected readings)
• Turn in critical response to selected class material (2 to 3 page essay)

 
Week 7: Empowerment in the lives of the chronically dis-eased
Class 13:

• Rdg. American Association of Diabetes Educators: A core curriculum for diabetes

education. (selected readings): Educational principles and strategies / Cultural appropriateness in diabetes education and care/ Behavior change..
Class 14:

•  
• Robert Anderson: Patient empowerment and the traditional medical model  
  
• Arun Baksi and Sue Cradock: What is empowerment?
• Rdg. Robert Anderson: Using the empowerment approach to help patients change

behavior.

•  
• Donnell Etzwiler. Chronic care: A need in search of a system  
  
• Jerome Kassirer: Doctor discontent
• Proposal for final project

 
Week 8: Health and the "big picture": medical anthropology and medical sociology.
Class 15:

• Rdg: Martha Balshem: Cancer in the Community. Ch. 3
• Rdg: Anne Fadiman: The spirit catches you and you fall down. Preface & Ch. 17

Class 16:

• Rdg. Phil Brown: Perspectives in medical sociology (Ch. 6 and 7)

 
Week 9: Health and the "big picture": human services and public health.
Class 17:

• Rdg. Salome Raheim: Self-employment training and family development: An integrated strategy for family empowerment  
  
• Gerald Smale: Integrating community and individual practice: A new paradigm

Class 18:

• Rdg.Lawrence Wallace: What is public health?  
  
• Dan Beauchamp: Public health as social justice  
  
• Johann Peter Frank: The people's misery: Mother of diseases
• Rdg. Ronald Labonte: Social inequality and healthy public policy: A new health education paradigm

 
Week 10: Health, spirit and beyond
Class 19:

• Rdg. Dennis Gesten: Are you getting enlightened or losing your mind? (selected readings, foreword, introduction, and ch. 1, 2 and 3)

Class 20:

• Rdg. Patricia Anderson: All of us: Americans talk about death (selected readings)  
  
• Sherwin Nuland: The doctor's role (from "Facing death")

 
Week 11: Health and economy: towards a sustainable society.
Class 21:

• Rdg. E. Schumacher: Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered (Ch. 4: Buddhist economics, Ch. 5. A question of size)

Class 22:

• Rdg. Patricia Allen: The human face of sustainable agriculture: Adding people to the environmental agenda
• Rdg. Alvin and Heidi Toeffler: Creating a new civilization (Ch. 5 and 8, Materialismo and Principles of the third wave agenda)

 
Week 12: Thinking globally, acting locally: my place in the world
Class 23:
General review, questions about final project
Class 24:
General review, questions about final project, evaluation (turn in portfolio a week later)

Community Studies 148 is designed for any student interested in the social context of women's health. While all women share biological commonalities, our social positions, cultural backgrounds, occupations, and personal choices create unique situations. This course challenges purely biomedical definitions of women's health through a multi-cultural and feminist approach. Because half the world is women and we all have some relationship to health and illness, "Women's Health" constitutes a potentially enormous topic. Women's Health, the course, can only provide an overview of this topic. To bring greater focus to our examination, the Spring 1999 course will examine women's health in a semi-historical manner, beginning with the emergence of the contemporary women's health movement of the 1970s and advancing to the present. We will examine some racial, class, and sexual critiques of the movement, as well as its major organizing themes: reproductive rights and technology, women's cancers, violence against women, cultural diversity, women's work and health, and the impacts of poverty and racism.

This is a Community Studies course, and as such, it addresses questions of organizing and activism. An important component of the course will be education about and experimentation with strategies of education and activism developed by various women's health movements: consciousness raising groups, confrontations, public education, demonstrations, rallies, lobbying, lawsuits, global activism. Film and video series will include Rachel's Daughters, Cancer in Two Voices, The Confrontation, and Blind Eye to Justice. Speakers from local and bay area women's health movmements.

Section attendance and participation is required of all students.

Required Texts, as currently planned (some changespossible):

Sandra Butler and Barbara Rosenblum, "Cancer in Two Voices"

Sheryl Ruzek, "The Women's Health Movement"

Sapphire, "Push"

"The New Our Bodies, Ourselves" (1998 edition)

"Women's Health Course Reader"

(I may also assign "Where there is no Midwife," from the Hyperion Institute or another book on reproductive technology.

EVALUATION will be based on:

A. Attendance and participation in section and lecture (25%).

AND

B. The following assignments (75%), ALL OF WHICH ARE TO BE SUBMITTED AT THE START OF LECTURE ON THE ASSIGNED DUE DATE

1. Health Journal, which will cover 3 weeks and include a short research attachment. (20%)

2. Class project(25%):

You can do your project alone or with a partner or a group.

Options, ideas:

a. grant proposal--developed with a community or campus organization

b. creative project--art, community, drama, dance, etc. The project can

be individual or collective.

c. research paper--can be library research primarily or be an original project.

All topics and projects must be approved. Each project has two phases:

a. initial proposal

b. completed project/paper

3. Take home exam (30%):

--reinterpret your health, health journal, and ideas about women's health activism in light of the class reading, lectures, etc. Due at 9 a.m. on the day of the exam.

Instructor: Nancy Stoller, Professor of Community Studies.
Author: Forced Labor: Maternity Care in the U.S.; Women Resisting AIDS: Feminist Strategies of Empowerment; and Lessons from the Damned: Queers, Whores and Junkies Respond to AIDS. Past health research and publications on lesbians, AIDS, midwifery, breast cancer; current research: medicine and gender in prison.

Revised 7/29/04.