The RC Women's Health Awareness Collaboration combines creative arts with analytic inquiry. In this course, you will examine issues and attitudes about women and illness through assignments, interaction with guest speakers and interviews with patients and survivors of serious illnesses. Your research and interviews will lead you to examine issues that affect women and their health from a developmental perspective. The course will raise questions surrounding where women are in their lives at the time of diagnosis, i.e., What life stage are they at and what impact do their diagnosis and prognosis have? We will pose the questions: What are the implications of illness for accomplishing developmental milestones such as marriage, childbearing, becoming a grandparent, career attainment and advancement? What are women's fears regarding the impact of illness on their respective life courses? These and other issues will be discussed throughout the semester and explored through activities that look at the theater of illness.
Through theater improvisation exercises (what works on stage), you will gain insight into issues raised in class or in outreach work (what works in the outside world). In exploring your own and others' attitudes towards illness as physical reality and as metaphor, you will use your findings to create and develop material for a multi-media performance to be presented on Dec. 7 at the University of Michigan Medical Center (during class) and on Dec.15, 16 and 17 at the U-M Residential College. The production will be a montage of original work which may include a variety of media of performance, including dramatic performance, oral narration, poetry, music, dance, projected visual images and other media suitable to the project. All aspects of the project will be documented through photographs and videotape, as well as through a written report containing sample student writings, portfolio assignments, the final "script" for performance and a written summary of participants' reactions to the project.
Please come to class on time (10:00), comfortably dressed and ready to take the stage!
Additional Time Commitment
In addition to attending Tuesday/Thursday class sessions, you will be expected to interview at least one patient. The woman you interview will be assigned to you and you should make your contact with her by the end of Sept. (Details will be announced in class.) You should anticipate spending time outside of class developing and rehearsing material for final performances, especially in the final weeks preceding performances. (The stage will be available for scene work on some Wednesday evenings.)
Reading assignments
Readings will come from the required texts (listed below), from texts distributed in class during the semester, and from materials used for individual research projects. Materials of interest will also be available in the East Quad Benzinger Library.
Required texts (all available at Ulrich's)
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (C. Northrup)
Women's Health. (Ruzek)
For Her Own Good (B. Ehrenreich & D. English)