Author: Elizabeth Reis

Elizabeth Reis recently joined the Macaulay Honors College at The City University of New York. Before that she was Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex and Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. She is also the editor of American Sexual Histories: A Social and Cultural History Reader.

Blog Post Final Assignment

For your final paper, you are going to write a blog post for the collaborative blog: nursingclio.org.  Nursingclio.org links discussion of contemporary issues related to gender and medicine to historical scholarship.

You can choose any topic having to do with the politics of women’s health, either something we’ve discussed in class or something we didn’t talk about but that you think would be interesting to pursue.

Your task is to make sure the issue you choose is one that can be placed in historical context.  So for example, if you want to talk about the current treatment and recovery process for breast cancer, you would read (or reread) the material that I assigned as well as do some additional research. It’s possible that you might need to find some historical material as well to provide you with a sense of the context, depending on the topic you choose.

I will be looking for three components:

  • how well you make the connection between your topic and its history
  • how persuasively you make your argument
  • how well written and engaging your blog post is.

Your post should be approximately 1000 words, double-spaced, and FREE of all grammatical and spelling errors. Your tone should be similar to the posts that are on the blog now, and so each of you should read at least 5 posts before you start writing your own. Some are more personal, like the one I wrote about getting fitted for a cervical cap: http://nursingclio.org/2013/05/13/whats-in-your-vulva/ and others are more historical, like the one I wrote about a recent intersex case: http://nursingclio.org/2013/05/17/do-no-harm-intersex-surgeries-and-the-limits-of-certainty/. Others focus on a contemporary political issue but still integrate historical context, like this one by Dr. Carrie Adkins: http://nursingclio.org/2013/03/29/north-dakota-where-freedom-blooms-on-the-hills-and-prairies-but-not-in-your-uterus/

As you will see, all of the essays on nursingclio.org are geared toward a general, educated audience. Your post should not include anything that could be considered jargon.

If your blog post is good enough, I will submit it to the other nursingclio.org editors for consideration for its publication. We are always looking for new talent!

You should find three or four corresponding pictures to accompany your essay, which may or may not be used if your essay is published online. On the last day of class, each of you will have 5 minutes to share your blog post with the class. And they will all be uploaded to our class website so that your classmates can read them.

Question for Friday, October 14 (Tuesday Schedule)

For October 14, read the first two sections of the book (to page 176) and answer this question. We will discuss the rest of the book when we meet again on October 18.

The passage in which the initial fated cells were removed from Henrietta Lacks’s body reads as follows (see page 33):

“With Henrietta unconscious on the operating table in the center of the room, her feet in stirrups, the surgeon on duty, Dr. Lawrence Wharton, Jr., sat on a stool between her legs. He peered inside Henrietta, dilated her cervix, and prepared to treat her tumor. But first – though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor – Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta’s cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish.”

Keep in mind that what was done with Henrietta Lacks was not illegal. Many of the laws around informed consent were born out of violations done in the past. But back in 1951, this was not a crime.

Do you think it was wrong of Dr. Wharton to remove the sample tissue in the first place? Was it wrong for Dr. Gey to collect those samples for the purpose of trying to grow them in controlled conditions?

Does the end – i.e., the immeasurable benefit to humankind resulting from those tissue samples – justify the means – i.e., removing tissue from a person without their consent or knowledge?

Question for Week 5: Mental Illness

Linda Logan writes in her essay about bipolar disorder:

“For many people with mental disorders, the transformation of the self is one of the most disturbing things about being ill. And their despair is heightened when doctors don’t engage with the issue, don’t ask about what parts of the self have vanished and don’t help figure out strategies to deal with that loss.”

To what extent was the transformation of one’s “self” the central issue in the other women’s lives we read about this week?

 

Question for Week 4: Pain and Disability

“To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.” Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain, p. 18

Please write a response about this quotation from Elaine Scarry’s book (which we’re not reading). How does it describe a central tension in most of what you’ve read this week?

We’ll also be talking about living with disability, which may or may not fit in with discussions of pain. You don’t need to include the articles that don’t fit this prompt in your answer (though you should still read them!) 🙂