Syllabus and Readings

Cultural Representations of Infectious Disease

Mar 30 - Apr 6, 1999

Tue Mar 30

• Disease Cluster Meetings
• Bring in cultural artifact on infectious disease. Examples include public health pamphlets, children's books, magazine articles or advertisements, posters, copies of graphics or text from web pages, music, etc.
• Read the following article (on reserve in Sharpless and Canaday) before class:
  • "Seeing the AIDS Patient," in Disease and Representation. Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS, Sander L. Gilman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p245-272

Thu Apr 1

• Disease Cluster Meetings
• Volunteers wanted to read selections from the following plays in class:
  • Angels in America. A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Tony Kushner, 1992 and 1994
  • Damaged Goods, Eugene Brieux, 1907
• Viewing and Discussion of excerpts from the video, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

Fri Apr 2

• Final Option for second essay due: Biological or social justice essays on AIDS: Possible topics include pregnancy and HIV; protease inhibitors; development of new drugs against HIV infection; AIDS vaccines; equity issues in drug trials; hemophilia lawsuits and contaminated blood supplies; orphan AIDS project; furor over the origin of AIDS; prostitutes and AIDS; culturally responsible AIDS education; needle exchange programs; the Names project; harm reduction programs; etc.

Tue Apr 6 (or Apr 13 for students in the anthrax and malaria disease clusters)

• Critical response of a particular cultural representation of infectious disease due: View a movie (e.g., Philadelphia; Jeffery; Outbreak; The Plague; Tongues Untied); visit a museum exhibit (e.g., "Emerging Infectious Diseases: Ancient Scourge and Modern Menace" at the College of Physicians; 19 S. 22nd St., Phila; 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Tue - Sat; 215-563-3737); read a biographical or fictionalized account of living with infectious disease; read stories in traditional or alternative presses. Analyze how the disease and people living with the disease are represented. Write a 3-page critical response exploring some of the following questions: Is the representation accurate (and by whose standards)? Does the representation promote social justice (and how would you define it)? Who is the intended audience? What are the goals of the representation and the consequences (intended or not)? Submit a hard copy and place an electronic version (saved as an html file) of your essay into the D&D "CR" 99 drop box in Kaye Edwards' folder on the Haverford College faculty server. Label it as "yourlastnameCR.html".

AIDS

SYPHILIS

PLAGUE

LEPROSY