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digest 2006-08-15 #001.txt

litsci-l Digest Tue, 15 Aug 2006

Table of contents:

1. Fwd: New Book: AVATARS OF STORY - "Wayne Miller" 
2. 'AGAINST HEALTH' CONFERENCE:  October 12-13 - "Elizabeth A. Wilson" 


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Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:01:11 -0400
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Fwd: New Book: AVATARS OF STORY

From Stacy Lienemann :
 
Traces the transformation of storytelling in the digital age.

AVATARS OF STORY
Marie-Laure Ryan
University of Minnesota Press | 296 pages | 2006
ISBN 0-8166-4685-6 | hardcover | $60.00
ISBN 0-8166-4685-6 | paperback | $20.00
Electronic Mediations Series, volume 17

Marie-Laure Ryan moves beyond literary works to examine other media,
especially
electronic narrative forms, revealing how story, a form of meaning that
transcends cultures and media, achieves diversity by presenting itself
under
multiple avatars. Ryan considers texts such as the reality television
showSurvivor, the film The Truman Show, and software-driven hypertext
fiction,
and anticipates the time when media will provide new ways to experience
stories.

For more information, including the table of contents, visit the book??s
webpage:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/R/ryan_avatars.html 

For more information on the Electronic Mediations Series:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/byseries/electronic.html 


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Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 08:47:58 +1000
From: "Elizabeth A. Wilson" 
Subject: 'AGAINST HEALTH' CONFERENCE:  October 12-13

** Warning: Message part originally used character set Big5
    Some characters may be lost or incorrect **

> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> On October 12 and 13, the University of Michigan will host an
international
> interdisciplinary conference titled AGAINST HEALTH: RESISTING THE
INVISIBLE
> MORALITY.   The conference will interrogate the tensions, ideologies,
and
> blind assumptions inherent in present-day definitions of "health."
> 
> The conference is free and open to the public, but advance
registration is
> required at www.umich.edu/againsthealth .
> As the website details, the conference will move between large-group
sessions
> and small-group, interactive workshops.  These workshops are aimed at
faculty,
> graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and the general public. 
We hope
> that you will consider attending and, when relevant, assigning
workshops for
> your classes and seminars.
> 
> 
> The conference schedule is as follows:
> 
> 
> October 12-13 2006
> Rackham Auditorium and fourth floor conference rooms
> 915 East Washington Street
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> 
> Thursday OCTOBER 12
> 
> 8:30am | REGISTRATION AND MORNING COFFEE
> 
> 9:30am | INTRODUCTIONS
> Rackham Amphitheater
> 
> Welcome: Carol Boyd, Director, Institute for Research on Women and
Gender, UM
> 
> Opening Remarks: Why ?Against Health?? Jonathan Metzl, UM, Conference
Chair
> 
> 10:00am | OPENING ADDRESS
> Introduction: Kenneth Warner, Dean and Avedis Donabedian Distinguished
> University Professor of Public Health
> Opening Address: "What is Health and How Do You Get It?" Richard
Klein,
> Professor, Romance Studies, Cornell University
> 
> 11:00am | BREAK
> Coffee and juice served
> 
> 11:15am | PANEL DISCUSSION: AGAINST HEALTH?
> Moderator: Jonathan Metzl
> 
> Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern
University
> School of Law. 
> Susan Kippax, Director, National Centre in HIV Social Research,
University of
> New South Wales 
> Kathleen LeBesco, Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts,
> Marymount Manhattan College
> Carl Elliott, Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy, University of
Minnesota
> 
> 12:30pm | LUNCH
> 
> 1:00pm | AFTERNOON KEYNOTE
> 
> Introduction: Paula Allen-Mears, Dean, U-M School of Social Work
> Keynote: Joycelyn Elders, Former United States Surgeon General
> 
> 2:15pm | BREAK
> 
> 2:30pm | CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS (4)
> 
> Panelist 1 Workshop: Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor,
Northwestern
> University School of Law; The Social Immorality of Health: How Health
Trumps
> Social Justice; Facilitator: Elizabeth Wingrove, UM; Room TBA
> 
> In contemporary debates about the bioethics of health policies, the
primacy
of
> guaranteeing good health is often deployed to deflect concerns about
racism
> and sexism. Health is distinguished from political and social
interests and
is
> supposed to trump social justice. I illustrate the social immorality
of
health
> by examining how the duty to ensure the health of the fetus imposed on
women
> at both ends of the reproductive caste system -- poor Black substance
abusers
> and affluent consumers of high tech reproductive tools -- reinforces
race and
> gender hierarchies. I also examine arguments that the health benefits
of
> race-specific pharmaceuticals outweigh their power to reify race as a
> biological category. All of these examples support the neo-liberal
shift of
> responsibility for public welfare from the state to the private realm
of
> family and market, accompanied by new forms of punitive governance.
> 
> Panelist 2 Workshop: Susan Kippax, Director, National Centre in HIV
Social
> Research, University of New South Wales;
> Privatising and Stigmatising the Sexual: the Power of the Biomedical
in
> Shaping the Response to HIV.
> Facilitator: David Halperin, UM, Room TBA
> 
> This year, 2006, marks the 25th anniversary of the identification of
what
> became known as AIDS: in June in 1981 in the United States a young gay
man
was
> ?diagnosed? with the most devastating immune deficiency. A couple of
years
> later HIV, the virus that causes AIDS was identified and in 1985 we
saw the
> development of a test to detect HIV infection in persons who showed no
signs
> of disease. The HIV test and the development of the first effective
treatments
> for those living with HIV - antiretroviral therapy (ART) - in 1996,
were
> watersheds in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As a social researcher reflecting
on
> these moments in HIV and on the responses of communities and
governments to
> the threat of HIV, I examine the unintended consequences of biomedical
> policies and practices. In the celebration of the medical, gender and
> sexuality are left unpoliticized and existing power relations -
between men
> and women, heterosexual and homosexual - are reinforced. I also
consider the
> ways in which social science has tried to trouble certain myths and
moralistic
> responses around sexuality and combat heterosexual male privilege and
> prejudice.
> 
> Panelist 3 Workshop: Kathleen LeBesco, Associate Professor and Chair
of
> Communication Arts, Marymount Manhattan College;
> Health at Every Size: Resisting or Deploying the Invisible Morality?
> Facilitator: Paul Campos, Professor of Law, University of Colorado;
Room TBA
> 
> In recent years, many activists and scholars who resist the medical
> pathologization of fatness have gravitated toward a Health at Every
Size
> (HAES) paradigm. HAES emphasizes total health enhancement and
well-being,
> rather than weight loss; it encourages self-acceptance and respect for
bodily
> diversity; it highlights the pleasure of eating well, based on
internal cues
> of hunger and satiety, rather than on external food plan or diets, and
> promotes the joy of movement, encouraging all physical activities
rather than
> prescribing a specific routine of regimented exercise (Kratina, Hayes
& King,
> 1996). The HAES paradigm has been politically useful inasmuch as it
allows
fat
> people to be aligned with models of health that are unthinkable in
mainstream
> discussion today. However, some fat-friendly critics have decried the
HAES
> perspective, suggesting that in the rush to be able to say ?we?re
healthy,
> too!?, fat activists are missing the point and in fact reinforcing
> ?healthism.? This workshop will explore the strategic viability of the
Health
> at Every Size paradigm for resisting the medicalization of morality
around
> issues of body size.
> 
> Panelist 4 Workshop: Carl Elliott, Professor of Bioethics and
Philosophy,
> University of Minnesota;
> Pharma Goes to the Laundry: The Art of Pharmaceutical Public
Relations.
> Facilitator: Jonathan Metzl, Room TBA.
> 
> Many types of pharmaceutical marketing have become such a part of
ordinary
> medical life that they are no longer seen as remarkable, such as sales
visits
> from drug representative and avertising in medical journals. But the
most
> interesting marketing practices are those that do not initially look
like
> marketing. This workshop will explore the various ways in which the
> pharmaceutical industry sells prescription drugs by using tools of
public
> relations, such as video news releases, ghostwritten journal articles,
and
the
> cultivation of ?thought leaders.?
> 
> 
> Friday, October 13
> 9:00am | MORNING COFFEE
> 
> 9:30am-10:45 am | CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS I
> 
> Workshop 1: Roddey Reid [UCSD]
> Theme: The Social Marketing of Healthy Behavior
> Brief Description: This workshop will look at the power and limits of
social
> marketing as the current media-based approach of choice for
translating
public
> health agendas into community practices and promoting healthy
behaviors. Its
> proponents have claimed that by virtue of its application of
commercial
> marketing methods to issues of public interest together with community
input
> it was more attentive to citizen-consumer needs than older public
health
> approaches plagued by top-down paternalism and sectarian, stigmatizing
> tendencies. By the mid-1990s social marketing had overcome
reservations
> expressed by some community, women?s, and gay and lesbian health
advocates
> concerning the transformation of citizens into individualized
consumers. In
> taking as our example the California anti-smoking campaigns, which
arguably
> marked the ascendancy of social marketing methods in US public health,
we
will
> re-open some of these debates, especially concerning the liabilities
of using
> mass media, and drawing on participants? own experience, will explore
the
> possible advantages of smaller, more community-based channels,
especially
> afforded by new digital technologies and narrowcast media (CDs, DVDs,
> podcasts, etc.) as alternative ways to broach health issues in the
public
> media sphere. 
> 
> Workshop 2: Rebecca Herzig [Bates]/Sarah Jain [Stanford]
> Theme: Injury, Suffering, Temporality: Living in Prognosis
> Brief Description: This workshop explores the centrality of time to
> contemporary biomedical framings of "health," focusing on the
relationship
> between dislocations of time and matters of social justice. We will
discuss
> how, for individuals engaged in contemporary biomedicine, acts of
disease,
> diagnosis, and treatment almost invariably involve a particular
organization
> of the experience of time, in which past and present injury are
weighed
> against an imagined future waiting on the other side of medical
intervention.
> We will ask participants to imaging ways in which living in prognosis
> materializes these calculations of time by manifesting unspoken
assessments
of
> the value of suffering in specific technical procedures, and to
consider
> alternative temporalities.
> 
> Workshop 3: Lisa Kane Low [UM], Libby Bogdan-Lovis [MSU], Ray Devries
[UM]
> Theme: Having it Her Way: Constructing Autonomy in Childbirth
> Brief Description: In March 2006, the National Institutes of Health
convened
a
> "State of the Science" Conference to address what was framed as
increased
> "Maternal Requests for Cesarean Delivery" (MCRD). Rhetoric commonly
used
> throughout the conference and in follow-up publications conflated
issues of
> choice and demand, thereby duplicitously characterizing the discussion
as a
> considered response to reasonable consumerism. Curiously there was
(and is)
no
> documented evidence that such a demand is real. Given such an evidence
gap,
> what forces are behind this illusory "demand" for surgical birth? How
is the
> much-valued notion of autonomous choice being appropriated to extend
and
> protect professional jurisdictions? This workshop will explore the
> sociological, ethical, feminist, and medical perspectives on this
latest
> chapter in the pursuit of women's reproductive autonomy and its varied
> constructions (and deconstructions) during childbirth.
> 
> Workshop 4: Petra Kuppers [UM]
> Theme: Re-Visioning Health: Reclaiming Agency Through Art Practice
> Brief Description: Artists in disability culture and beyond are
creating
> exciting and thoughtful responses to the visusalisations, narratives
and
> performances they see, experience, and collaborate with in
contemporary
> biomedical practice. In our time together, we will look closely at
some of
> these practices to see how concepts of health can be challenged and
re-emerge
> in difference, and how social and systemic change can be thought at
the nexus
> of contemporary art practice, health activism and community arts.
> 
> Workshop 5: Magdalena Harris [UNSW]
> Theme: Chronic Illness, Stigma and Social Exclusion
> Brief Description: This workshop will use the example of hepatitis C
as a
> framework to explore ideas relating to stigma, social exclusion and
the norms
> and mores around what constitutes 'health'. Hepatitis C is a virulent,
often
> chronic, condition infecting 170 million people worldwide. Stigma and
> discrimination experienced by people living with the virus primarily
result
> from the perception that it is a 'junkie's disease'. Intertwined with
this
> stigma are public fears of transmission and societal intolerance for
chronic
> illness. Within this workshop we will reflect upon and interrogate the
> assumptions underlying and exacerbating these stigmas and ask how, in
a
> context where health and functionality are reified and prohibition
socially
> sanctioned, can the stigmas and discrimination associated with
illnesses such
> as hepatitis C be alleviated?
> 10:45am | BREAK
> 
> 11:00am-12:15pm | CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS II
> 
> Workshop 1: Roddey Reid (Repeated)
> Theme: The Social Marketing of Healthy Behavior
> 
> Workshop 2: Rebecca Herzig/Sarah Jain (Repeated)
> Theme: Injury, Suffering, Temporality: Living in Prognosis
> 
> Workshop 3: Kane Race [UNSW]
> Theme: HIV Politics, Harm Reduction, and Pleasure
> Brief Description: Viewed in terms of the conditions of its emergence
in the
> initial AIDS crisis, it is possible to see how 'harm reduction' took
distance
> from a prohibitive moral stance, and worked by suspending moral
judgment on
> the character of endangered groups, promoting instead pragmatic
precautions
> such as condoms, clean needles, and targeted education on the grounds
of
> public health. This suspension of moral judgment produced a critical
> leveraging point: Where conservatives objected to the institution of
needle
> exchanges, practitioners cited the public health objective of HIV
prevention.
> Where moral reactionaries condemned homosexual practice as a health
threat
> outright, activists appealed to the scientific fact that HIV can be
prevented
> by the use of condoms. In this sense harm reduction could be conceived
as a
> radicalization of biopower that rejects the strategies of
incarceration,
> medicalization, and normalization as productive of public health. In
this
> workshop we will consider the sort of intervention that harm reduction
makes
> into the field of care and consider the ambiguous place of pleasure
within
> this broad approach.
> 
> Workshop 4: Nicholas King [Case Western]
> Theme: Is Health a Useful Proxy for Social Justice?
> Brief Description: Is health a useful proxy for social justice?
Appeals to
> health as a proxy for social justice have become common during the
past two
> decades. Qualitative researchers argue that social, political, and
economic
> injustice adversely impacts the health of individuals and populations
through
> a complex web of causation. Similarly, quantitative researchers use
> increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques to demonstrate the
links
> between population health and environmental degradation, income
inequality,
> changes in the nature of work, and other macro-level
political-economic
> processes. This research is used to support the contention that social
> injustice is in some way "bad for our health." This presentation
examines how
> this pragmatic strategy often has unintended consequences, and asks
whether,
> in some cases, the substitution of measurable health outcomes for
moral
> outrage might be counterproductive in the long run?
> 
> Workshop 5: Brad Lewis [NYU]
> Facilitator: Bernice Hausman [Virginia Tech]
> Theme: Postpsychiatry
> Brief Description: This workshop will be devoted to the emergence of
> ?postpsychiatry.? Postpsychiatry brings to mental health practice the
tools
> and resources of contemporary humanities and social theory. These
additional
> tools allow psychiatry to better understand the complexities of human
> suffering and to better analyze the tensions and struggles within
mental
> health. Taking seriously the multiplicities of meaning surrounding
human
life,
> postpsychiatry opens the door to a more collaborative approach with
service
> users and with the broader intellectual community.
> 
> 12:15pm | LUNCH ON YOUR OWN
> 
> 1:00pm | AFTERNOON KEYNOTE
> Introduction: Carol Boyd, Professor of Nursing and Chair, Institute
For
> Research On Women And Gender
> Susan Love, Clinical Professor of Surgery, David Geffen, School of
Medicine
at
> UCLA 
> 
> 2:15pm-4:00pm | PLENARY SESSION: Against Health - Future Directions
> 
> Chair: David Halperin
> With Roddey Reid, Rebecca Herzig, Sarah Jain, Petra Kuppers, Magdalena
Harris,
> Kane Race, Nicholas King, Lisa Kane Low, Libby Bogdan-Lovis, Ray
Devries, and
> Brad Lewis
> 
> 7:00pm | Closing party for all attendees
> 
>  
> 


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End of litsci-l Digest Tue, 15 Aug 2006
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