HW 43 - Elevator speech

Re: your culminating project (42) - due Thursday &/or Friday April 6 or April 7.

You should script and practice your speech so that you can deliver it with the assistance of a few reminders on an index card and your memory.

Find ways of making it powerful, fascinating, funny, suspenseful, &/or moving.

The speech must be between 1 & 2 minutes long - it will be delivered in class beginning Wednesday. Your goals;

1. Communicate the essence of your project
2. Interest people in further exploring your project by looking on your blog
3. Craft a compelling self-presentation around your own work using humor, pathos, suspense, passion, etc. (Use of a prop encouraged but optional.)

The rubric for your speech will include;
1. Did you effectively engage the limbic systems of your audience?
2. Did you effectively communicate the essence/main-idea of your project?
3. Did you effectively interest people in reading more about your project?

HW 42 - Pregnancy & birth culminating project

Transform your understanding from interviews, speakers, class discussion, books, independent research, and film into an active project that meaningfully contributes to our collective social practices.

Choice 1: Organize a personal experience around this topic and write a narrative/make a film of your experience. Post it on your blog - ideally with uploads of photos and/or video.

Choice 2: Create an advocacy campaign, either alone or working with an existing group (or one you form), that creates change in dominant social practices around pregnancy & birth. Identify your desired change, stakeholders in that issue, means of communicating persuasive ideas/stories/information, do the change effort, and evaluate, using at least 2 follow-up surveys or interviews the success of your effort. Post a short summary of your work and its effects on your blog (1-2 paragraph, ideally with uploads of flyers, letter, etc.).

Choice 3: Write a 2-5 page essay that assembles powerful evidence to analyze a particular aspect of the dominant social practices around pregnancy & birth. Post it on your blog with an MLA works cited section.

Due Wednesday, April 6 at 8pm.

HW 41 - Independent Research

Please conduct significant (several hours) of independent research regarding ONE or TWO specific aspects of the dominant practices around pregnancy & birth in our culture. Choose an aspect that you want to actually work on - whether in an academic, activist, or experiential way. Create the most specific and fascinating topic for research that you can.

I encourage you to start with the internet but don't end there. Make some phone calls, do a visit or two, look something up in a database or at the library.

Possible aspects to focus on;
1. _______
2. _______
3. NY legislation regarding hospital birth statistics
4. ACOG versus midwives arguments & power struggles
5. The birth process - from contractions to labor to birth to 1st hour
6. NYC abortion options
7. Adoptions in NYC
8. Factors influencing the choices around making babies
9. Particular group's rates and perspectives on childbirth
10. Ideal versus typical male roles during pregnancy & childbirth
11. Best practices for doctors to not dominate patients during this process
12. Becoming a doula
13. Becoming an OB/GYN
14. NYC hospitals and birth centers - statistics, contacts, perspectives
15. Organizations of people meeting in NYC around birth issues for advocacy and education
16. Pregnancy & birth as limit experience
17. Making sense of competing discourses around pregnancy & birth - participants, power networks, ideologies, money, practices.
18. The first hour after birth
19. Government support for pregnant women and mothers in poverty - if you're poor and becoming a mother in NYC what programs could help you and how would you apply?
20. Prenatal strengthening and nutrition and exercise and self-care

A. Create a short annotated bibliography of the 5-10 best sources you find. (another guide)
B. In a paragraph or two sketch out a way you could use your research to support a culminating project for this unit - an experiential or activist or academic project that allows you to become a contributing expert in discourses around this important topic.

Parts A & B of HW 41 should be posted by Friday, April 1, at 8:30am.

HW 40 - Insights from Book - Part 3

You find yourself at a cocktail party with the author of the book you just finished reading. To demonstrate that you really read it, you say, "Hey - thanks for writing __________. Your (thesis/core argument/main idea) _________________________________ (moved me/persuaded me/made me rethink pregnancy & birth)."

But the author, surprised to be talking to someone who instead of sharing their own birth story actually rephrased the main idea of the text s/he spent months giving birth to asks, "Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?" When you answer, "Well, in the last third of the book you focused on ____________________________ , which (added another angle to/connected back to/further developed/contradicted) the first 2/3rds of the book. But let me be more specific." And then you listed the top 3 ideas/pieces of evidence/insights/questions from that final third of the book (and somehow even listed page number references).

1. _________ (#)

2. _________ (#)

3. _________ (#)

At this point, realizing that s/he's having a unique conversation with a serious reader of her/his book, the author asks - "But what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?" You answer, "Well, let's be clear - your text sought to provide (narratives, historical analysis, journalistic analysis, policy analysis) from the perspective of a ( ....) for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. Given that aim, and your book, the best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be, _____________________________. But I don't want you to feel like I'm criticizing. I appreciate the immense amount of labor you dedicated to this important issue and particularly for making me think about ________________ & _____________ (as specific as possible). In fact, I'm likely to do __________ ____________ differently as a result of your book." The author replies, "Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope about our future as a society!"

Please copy the above dialogue - fill in the blanks and then rework the dialogue so that it represents your experience honestly and creatively. Humor &/or depth of thought would be much appreciated by your readers.

Due Monday, March 28th at 9pm.

HW 39 - Insights from Book - Part 2

After having read the second hundred pages (roughly) of your book please address the following points either in separate paragraphs or as Q & A;
1. After MLA citation list several topics/areas the book has taught you about that the "Business of Being Born" either ignored or treated differently or in less depth.

2. The major insight the book tries to communicate in the second 100 pages (1-3 sentences) and your response to that insight (2-4 sentences).

3. List 5 interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth discussed in the second hundred pages that you agree deserve wider attention (include page number).

4. Independently research one crucial factual claim by the author in the second hundred pages and assess the validity of the author's use of that evidence.

Suggestions for each of the 4 points above;
1 (contrast) Look back through your notes or through the second hundred pages and make a list of topics discussed. Look at your notes for "Business of Being Born". Think about the most important non-overlap between the two.
2 (thesis) - If you can find an actual quote or two from the book to answer this, that would be better than a paraphrase, perhaps connecting several quotes to be more accurate.
3 (key points) - Check your notes, what struck you, what do you find yourself still thinking about?
4 (evidence) - Use "Cochrane Reviews" which is considered among the most reliable guides to evidence-based clinical practice or, if Cochrane doesn't have it, try PubMed using the search bar on top. That's how the scientists and medical professionals do research. If you can't make either of those sources give you good information then do a Google using terms like 'research' and/or 'study' in addition to the topic you want returned.

Please post by Tuesday, March 22, 8pm.

HW 38 - Insights from pregnancy & birth book - part 1

After having read the first hundred pages (roughly) of your book please address the following points;

1. How the book is organized (2-3 sentences)

2. The major question the book tries to answer (1-2 sentences) and some responses you have to that question (2-4 sentences).

3. The major insight the book tries to communicate in the first 100 pages (1-3 sentences) and your response to that insight (2-4 sentences).

4. 5 interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth that you (and the author) agree deserve public attention (1-2 sentences each)

5. The author's use of evidence - what support does the author build for her/his arguments, how reliable do you find the evidence, how deftly does the author use the evidence without stalling the progress of the book?

Suggestions for each of the 5 points above;

1 (organization) - Look at table of contents, read introduction, flip through book, think about how you would lay out a book you were writing about pregnancy and birth. Map the major topics.

2 (essential question) - Re-read introduction and first chapter - skim through 100 pages again to spot this. If you can find an actual quote or two from the book to answer this, that would be better than a paraphrase.

3 (thesis) - If you can find an actual quote or two from the book to answer this, that would be better than a paraphrase, perhaps connecting several quotes to be more accurate.

4 (key points) - Check your notes, what struck you, what do you find yourself still thinking about?

5 (evidence) - Think about the type of evidence (anecdotal, statistical, logical, etc), the source of the evidence (doctors, mothers, eyewitness, scientists, anthropologists?), and the way the evidence got communicated (endnotes in the back of the book, quotes, footnotes?). Does the text convince you, do you find it honest and accurate?

Due Tuesday, March 15 at 8:30am.