Midterm Exam

The midterm exam will be Monday, required for all, and (to restate) be entirely drawn from the list of what a person needs to know from social studies to be somewhat "culturally literate" in the U.S.

Again, I urge you to prepare for the exam - what you learn now will also help in early June when a final will be drawn from the same list.

Passing with a 33/50 or greater will lead to benefits, failing will lead to no additional penalties.

HW 32 - Thoughts following illness & dying unit

Please post a paragraph or two of your thoughts regarding dominant social practices of illness & dying in our culture.

You could, but don't have to, address one or more of the following questions:

• What's most nightmarish about our culture's practices around illness & dying?
• What alternative practices offer the most positive re-orientation in illness & dying?
• What might you do or address differently as a result of what you've learned this unit, individually and with your family?
• How do dominant social practices (DSP) around illness & dying connect to DSP around food in our culture?
  

Quote other students' insights from their speeches and blog posts if useful.

Due Friday, Jan. 21 at 9pm. Comments from T/W teams due Tuesday, Jan. 25 at 9pm as HW 33.

HW 31 - Comments 3

Please post comments from T/W Teams - see instructions in HW 30. Also, please post copies of comments you made on 2+ additional blogs following the elevator speeches.

Due Thursday, Jan. 20 9pm.

MLK, Jr. Resources

A "top five" audio/video list.
A chronological list of sermons and speeches, including some audio.

20 minutes of respectful and thoughtful listening to Dr. King seems to me a moral obligation on the day in his honor - trying to see the person behind the postage-stamp saint seems an important step towards maturity and maybe even a gesture of resistance against trivialization - trying to grasp some of the nuances in the history and message and movement he embodied seems like a broadening intellectual move.

HW 30 - Illness & Dying - Culminating Experiential Project

Plan and carry-out a project that combines a key text, some internet research, and real world interactions to gather insight on a particular aspect of the dominant social practices around illness & dying. I expect each step (thinking, research, acting, writing, preparing presentation) to require 1-3 hours.

Given the possible canceled day Wednesday, we'll make the due date for your post Sunday at noon, January 16.

Your post should address the following elements:

• What aspect of the dominant social practices around illness & dying did you decide to explore?
• What resource(s) or insight(s) from the unit (if any) connect to this aspect?
• What information did you gather from the internet related to this aspect? Please cite sources.
  
• How did you explore? What did you do in the real world? Did you enjoy it, contribute to another, see something new? Give us some flavor, show don't tell.
• What did you learn?
• What does this show about dominant social practices of illness & dying in our culture?
• Why does that matter?

Your presentations on Monday and Tuesday will be 2 minute "elevator speeches" that share the most interesting aspect of what you did and what you learned. The elevator speeches will serve as an additional grade for the project - you should view them as "best of" rather than "narratives (sequences of actions)" - interested folks with look to your blog for more insight. You should have a single prop (photo, quick handout, or souvenir of your experience) and practice the speech several times before hand (timed).

You should email to ask your T/W teams to contribute comments to your post as soon as you've published it Sunday (proofread and revise first!). "HW 31 - Comments 3" should be up by Tuesday, January 18 at 9pm using the same format as before ("best of" for above/below mentors, other aspect from classmates - then a dashed line and your comments for others in your T/W teams).

HW 29 - Reading and noting basic materials

For this assignment, you will put together a 1-2 page map of crucial information about 3-5 aspects of dominant practices of illness & dying in the U.S.

I imagine 3-5 "domains" made of 1-2 paragraphs each of the condensed situation, with footnoted or in-text citations. The domains that came to mind for me include;

• Facing Terminal Illness – Tuesdays, My Brother, Beth
• Isolation – hospitalization, old folks’ homes, Stigma
• Paying for medical care – historically and now – Sicko, Sick, Landmark, Beth,
• The process of dying – Near-Death, Beth, A Time For Dying
• Being sick – Family interviews, own experience.
  
  

A model of what sort of map you could write about one of the domains:

Process of Dying:

The process of dying includes many variables. Where a person dies, his/her beliefs, support network, and the medical interventions attempted can all significantly impact the experience (but not the outcome). Our guest speaker made a home death for her husband which was an intimate, if grueling, final week together. The film Near-Death documented the backs-and-forths in the dying process in the hospital which included confusion over whether to attempt medical interventions or simply to increase patient comfort through the process. In A Time For Dying a medical anthropologist distinguishes between the historical hospital process, with a “death watch” (93), and the current situation with futile but reimbursable interventions being the norm (97), and the growing desire for a less mechanized death (27).

Note: All of the below excerpts have been password-protected to ensure that the only downloading will be for the educational purposes identified as "Fair Use".
historical excerpts from Sick
journalistic explanation of new health care legislation from Landmark
sociological/psychological analysis of Stigma
anthropological analysis of dying in hospitals
NYT op-ed in favor of less medical interventions in dying

Will be due 9pm, Saturday, January 8.

HW 28 - Comments 2

Please create a separate post - HW 28 - to post your comments for other people re: HW 27, copied from the "Comments" section of their blog. It should look like this:

For Alan, Your most beautiful line was, "Your last paragraph in its entirety spoke many truths to me, sometimes in ways I never even thought about myself (how pain represents the courage to feel). " I think this is so beautifully written, and so true. There can be a certain bliss in pain - but only when embraced and accepted, not fought. If we don't feel these losses we can never value having."

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Underneath the comments you copied that you wrote, please do a dashed line and copy the comments that your T/W team wrote for your HW 27 (ask them all to, if you haven't already). If the people didn't label their relationship to you, please do that for them.

Due Tuesday, January 4 at 8:30pm.