WINTER 2001

This information effective for Winter 2001.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Community Studies

[CMMU-105] [CMMU-121]

105. Art and Politics

[Note: A new course offered in Winter 2001]

Instructor: Carter Wilson
TTh 2:00PM - 3:45PM
Porter 144

Course Description

One purpose of the course is to think seriously about what are called sometimes Modes of persuasion (how can work affect the way others perceive things and act). The contexts chosen for exploring the persuasion theme in this course are two: first, prominent social issues of the day - substance abuse, immigration, the possibility of reintegration of societies that have been at war with themselves; and second, our own educational experience and the contemplation of our future practice (especially if we mean to become some sort of an artist/writer/filmmaker).

The course begins with a discussion of affirmative action in higher education (California and beyond California) and diversity training. Students are asked to think through their own core course (or similar) experience, and to criticize it. Subsequently, we talk about education in general, how it happens, and specifically the issue of to what extent education replicates the social order both in the general and in the heart of the "successful" student. (Ranciere's Ignorant Schoolmaster and his implied critique of Bourdieu are one text here.)

The second movement of the course undertakes issues of artistic and personal "persuasion." Here we study the AIDS Quilt, the Vietnam Memorial, and other examples of a modern trend away from heroic (or literally "monumental") public memorializing. We also look at the record of the careful ("persuasive") way Antonio Gramsci went about trying to convince someone he cared about deeply to rethink her declared anti-Semitism.

In the third movement, students are asked to deal with four powerful current artistic documents. One is a wonderful film, "La Promesse," which is about a poor Belgian adolescent who takes on responsibility for the well-being of an illegal woman immigrant from Africa and her baby child. The second is "Train Spotting," the commercial fictional film comedy about young Scottish intravenous drug users, and the third Denis Johnson's book of stories about a similar subculture in the U.S. The last of these documents is a video about the work of the Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa, "Long Night's Journey Into Day."

Remembering their original critique of their own educational experiences, for final projects students are asked either to create (and then contextualize) an "art" piece which addresses one or more social issues, or to create a learning plan for a course on current social issues for a particular grade level. The theme of curriculum (the planning of learning experience) will be a constant throughout the course.

As of this writing, it is not clear whether there will be sections in the course

 

Topics, Visual and Written Materials, and Assignments by Week

[Note: Starting with Week 2 and through Week 9, in addition to the assignments listed below, students will present weekly "responses" to the reading and film/video showings of the class. These are required assignments.]

Week 1:

a) Introduction to the course

b) The Affirmative Action and Diversity Movements - background

Reading: Glazer, "We Are All Multicultural Now"; The UC Berkeley "Diversity Report"

Week 2:

a) College core courses - their purpose, their "success" ratio

b) Diversity, equality, and achievement

Video: "School Colors"

Reading: The University of Michigan and Frontline websites; Crosby and VanDeVeer, Sex, Race, & Merit (selections); Ranciere, The Ignorant School Master (Introduction)

Week 3:

a) and b) How does "education" proceed? (Can the blind lead the blind?) Does western education only replicate society as it exists, or can it be an agent of change?

Reading: The Ignorant School Master (continued)

Assignment Due: Individual critique of core course experience (4 pages)

Week 4:

a) and b) "Changing hearts and minds" The movement from the heroic to the convivial in public remembrance (the Viet Nam Memorial and the AIDS Quilt)

Reading: selected chapters of Tangled Memories and Written In Stone

Video: "Common Threads"

Assignment Due: Final project proposal (culture item or curriculum plan)

Week 5:

a) "Training at a distance" and personal persuasion - Gramsci to his sons and to his sister-in-law

b) The personalization of the large social issue (the example of immigration)

Video: "La Promesse"

Reading: Gramsci's letters to his children and to his sister-in-law

Weeks 6 and 7:

Fiction as a persuasive device, contrasted with film ("inwardness" and "outwardness"). Can a fictional film "advocate" a point of view? Persuade to the viewer to action?

Reading: Jesus' Live

Video: "Train Spotting"

Weeks 8 and 9: The reconciliation of points of view. "Broken" (disrupted) societies that must live with themselves. (The problem of "forgiveness.")

Reading: To be chosen

Video: "Long Night's Journey into Day"

Assignment Due, end of Week 9: Final project or curriculum

Week 10:

a) Showing of student projects, collective assessment of curricula

b) Conclusions

 

Reading and media list:

Books:

Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone
Jacques Ranciere, The Ignorant Schoolmaster
Marita Sturkin, Tangled Memories

Reader contents:

* "The Diversity Report" (excerpted), a study of how undergraduates at Berkeley feel about/understand affirmative action/diversity issues on campus, circa 1990

* Nathan Glaser, "We Are All Multicultural Now," (article)

* Antonio Gramsci, Prison Letters (excerpted), especially the letters to his sister-in-law concerning anti-Semitism, and letters to his sons

Faye Crosby and Cheryl VanDeVeer, Sex, Race, & Merit (selections)

Films/Videos: (in sequence of showing)

"School Colors"
"Common Threads"
"La Promesse"
"Trainspotting"
"Long Night's Journey into Day"

Websites:

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/ The "Frontline" show website contains supplemental materials for the video "School Colors." Includes items on UC admission.

http://www.umich.edu/lawsuit/ The website of the University of Michigan contains a great deal of information about the university's current lawsuit concerning affirmative action; especially, pieces by psychologist Patricia Gurin.

Course Mechanics

The basis for evaluation will be: a) writing, including weekly responses to the lecture/written/media materials; b) course participation, including attendance at lecture and section; and, c) a final project, which for some will be a written curriculum for a course on current social issues they might teach, for others a "curriculum item" (short video, slide show, photo exhibit, story, poem sequence) together with a written description of how the piece could be integrated into a school curriculum at a particular grade level.

 [top of page]

121. Health and Human Rights in Prison

Instructor: Nancy E. Stoller
Winter 2001

Catalog description:

Critical analysis of health and human rights conditions for prisoners. Includes examination of contemporary theory and practice of punishment, health care in prison, and community and legal intervention in jail and prison conditions.

Enrollment: limited to 20

Final exam: not required.

This course will function as a research seminar. Students enrolling should expect to prepare a 20-25 page research paper during the quarter or an equivalent project in another medium. In addition, there will be close discussion of issues raised by readings assigned weekly. Each student will make an in-class presentation of his or her research project.

1. Major topics to be addressed during the course:

I. Human rights perspectives and practices:

  1. Conflicting views of the rights of prisoners.
  2. Comparative overview of conditions in American, European, African, Latin American prisons and jails
  3. Relationship between human rights and health conditions
  4. Class, race, confinement and treatment

II. Rise of a profession: Correctional Medicine

  1. History of the new profession, in context:

    Health needs of prisoners

    1. General needs
      Special needs associated with incarceration

    Influence of the lawsuits of the 60s and 70s
    Medicalization trends in society
    Development of professional associations of prison and jail physicians and other health care providers
    Professionalization of corrections
    Rise of ancillary medical professions
    Public health sector growth
    The rehabilitation tradition

  2. Changing demographics of prison populations and the consequences in terms of changing health needs:

    Growth in population
    Aging of population

    1. Death and dying
      Chronic illness
  3. Managed care outside and then in?

    Privatization in prisons as part of the general trend in government
    Managed care case studies: Montefiore vs. St Barnabas at Rikers Island, New York; Yale vs. UConn at Niantic

    Differences and similarities in state provided care:

    1. California, US Bureau of Prisons and SF Jail, all of which have public agencies delivering the care, but very different philosophies of both care and confinement.

III. Punitive corrections and the uses of medical knowledge and technology

  1. Physical consequences of various policies

    Administrative and other forms of segregation
    Isolation--its psychic effects
    Management techniques, which physically harm inmates, e.g., cell extractions, denials of clothing; reductions in food quantity and/or quality
    Prison construction and its impact

  2. Medical technology in correctional institutions

    Scientific technology/medical technology

    1. Managing prisoners through medicine
      1. psychotropics
        instruments

      Delivering death scientifically

  3. Doctors as protectors of the patient/prisoner

    Ethics of monitoring the prisoner's health when the prisoner is being physically harmed?
    What is torture?
    What is the health care practitioner's role when torture or state sanctioned violence may be occurring?

IV. The Medical Management of Gender in Prisons

Sexuality
Women's health
Exceptionalism
Pregnancy care
Other women's issues

Transgender care
Comparison of handling of men and women in terms of needs
Homosexuality

V. New illnesses and approaches

  1. Case study:
    1. HIV
      Health, human rights, and HIV
      Race and HIV
      How HIV has contributed to the quality of medicine inside
      Politicization of HIV in the broader society, linking HIV people outside with those inside
      Activism
      Clinical trials--changing the dynamic of experimentation with prisoners
      Treatment vs. prevention emphasis
      Dying in prison
      Exceptionalism again
      Case studies in the care of prisoners with HIV: US Bureau of Prisons; Calif.; Bedford Hills, NY
  2. Other "new" illnesses: Hepatitis B and C; HPV; women's cancers; prostate cancer.

VI. Changing Activist Strategies

  1. Legal approaches--The role of settlements; Monitors and monitoring; Individual vs. class action lawsuits. Changing conditions for litigation-Impact of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
  2. Community activism and visitation
  3. Organizing and special groups of prisoners: ethnicity and race; women; political prisoners
  4. Organizing by prisoners
  5. Role of the UN
  6. Third world/first world differences
  7. Global organizing
     

2. Readings

Readings will include primary sources from investigations, memos, and guidelines for the care of prisoners form the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, American Correctional Association, US Dept. of Justice, National Commission on Correctional Health Care. Students may find more readings than usual at the reserve desk.

Also readings from:

The Clinical Practice in Correctional Medicine
The Journal of Correctional Health Care
Juanita Diaz-Cotto, Gender, Ethnicity and the State: Latina and Latino Prison Politics, 1996.
Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America, New York: Owl Press, 1998
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1979
Stuart Grassian, "The psychopathological effects of solitary confinement," 140 AM J Psychiatry 1450 (1993)
New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement
Lorna A. Rhodes, "Taxonomic Anxieties: Axis I and Axis II in Prison," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14 (3): 346-373, 2000
Rhidian A. Hughes, "Health, Place and British Prisons," Health & Place, 6:1, pp. 57-62, Mar, 2000
Critical Resistance, special issue of Social Justice, W 2001
Nancy Stoller, "Improving Access to Health Care for California's Women Prisoners," California Policy Research Center, 2000

Other readings to be added after discussion with class members concerning research interests that may be shared by the class.

3.Basis of Evaluation

Students will be evaluated on the following basis:

1. Class participation, including presentation of specific readings and leading class discussion.

2. Weekly reading critiques

3. Final project

a. in-class presentation of project
b. Research paper of approximately 20 pages
[top of page]