Liberal Studies Seminars

The Arctic and the Amazon are only recently explored, mapped, and affected by the economic, social, and ecological forces associated with modernity.  They have many things in common, including an often inaccurate treatment in popular literature and films, sensitive environments disproportionately affected by global change, recent penetration of even the most remote regions by highways and seaways; new interest by outside economic actors in resource development, and small groups of indigenous people trying to obtain decision-making authority and protect traditional cultures and people/land relationships.

The course will interrogate how several disciplines deal with the past, present, and future of these important mega-regions, including history, literature, anthropology, political economy and economics, ecology and conservative biology, and public policy studies.

1. Heroic exploration narratives—not that long ago—Theodore Roosevelt in River of Doubt; Arctic exploration narratives of Fritjob Nansen, accounts of the Franklin expedition, George DeLong’s Jeanette expedition and others;
2. Literary works with a strong sense of place.  For example, David Gramm’s The Lost City of Z or Kim Leine’s Prophets of the Eternal Fjord (18^th century Greenland);
3. Relatively small numbers of scattered indigenous groups that are struggling for sovereignty over land and resources and to hold on to traditional ways of life;

1. historical encounters between indigenous people and Europeans; Canadian Film Board film Pangnirtung; exploitation of rubber tappers;
2. groups exhibiting agency rather than victimhood (Kayapo and Xingu; Choci Mendes and rubber tappers; Arctic Native Claims Settlement Act; Matthew Coon Come and the James Bay Cree); links with national and international environmental groups;

4.    Potential for mineral development (oil and gas, metals); water and dams in Amazonia; agriculture and forest plantations; fisheries in Arctic seas and Amazonian rivers;

5.    Biodiversity—extremely high in Amazonia; extremely low in Arctic.  Concentration of nutrients (in vegetation in Amazon) in waters and under the ice in Arctic.  Emblematic life forms—the polar bear and the jaguar;

6.    Multiple nations involved—six in Amazon basin; six in Arctic.  Scores of subnational governments and stakeholders;

7.    Historically colonial relationship to outside authority—core and periphery; decolonialization;

8.    Relation of local groups to national and international NGOs in seeking to confirm or protect management and use rights;

9.    Role of tourism/ecotourism as both a threat to the environment and a possible income source for local people;

10.  Designation and management of protected areas; type of areas and implementation experience;

11.       Present and future impacts of climate change—warming and ice melt in Arctic; drought and fire in Amazon; impacts on local people; impacts on world climate system; policy alternatives.

*New Course*

In ancient times, midwives traditionally worked with families from ‘womb to tomb,’ bringing in new life and laying out the dead. They saw living and dying as opposing aspects of the same cycle. The two were of equal importance, as two passages through the same door: one coming in, the other going out. Midwives were as intimately involved in every manifestation of death as they were in those of life. Midwives traditionally supported and taught the dying, and cradled the corpse as well as the infant, each to its own particular new life.--Carol Leonard

We often think of birth and death as “natural” events that take place outside of any politics or ideology.  This class argues that the processes of birth and death are managed by several competing institutions, and that most of the practices overlook what have been thought of as traditionally women’s roles.  These institutions—science, medicine, and religion—do not intend to usurp women’s work; they are simply fulfilling their mandate: goals of progress, cleanliness, and modernity, inadvertently (?) hide the power of these institutions from public view.  Thus, at the beginning of the 21^st century, we know very little about what actually happens during these two important life events, birth and death.

Nowhere is this dilemma more salient than in the questions of birth and maternal-infant health.  Despite the fact that prenatal care and birth are well covered by public and private funds, the United States ranks among the lowest of industrialized nations in terms of mother/child health.  Lack of adequate prenatal care, coupled with overuse of medical interventions, have doubled the rate of maternal death over the last 20 years.  In the face of these problems, many health care professionals are turning to a midwifery model of care in order to try to reduce maternal death and increase infant health. The first section of the course covers the changes in birth practices over the last sixty years.  Once we moved to a hospital setting, it became much harder for birth practitioners to view birth as something “normal.”  In this section we will review the many reasons why this is the case.  We will also investigate the question of whether or not the medical model should dominate or even influence the birth process.  Many midwives believe that medicine has developed important interventions to help birth along; these interventions, they argue, should be “at the ready” and used whenever things even look like they could potentially go wrong.  Midwives in this tradition are called Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM); they are trained nurses who specialize in birth.  Conversely, Certified Professional Midwives (CPM) do not require a nursing degree and do not follow a medical model for the birthing process.  Helping a woman give birth, they argue, is a matter of offering comfort, support, massage, food, entertainment, time.  A woman’s body knows how to give birth, these midwives suggest, and they are present to support this process, not control it.  CPM’s are illegal in 23 states, including North Carolina.  CPM’s caught performing a homebirth in any of these 23 states are prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license.

            The second issue investigated in this class is the event of death.  100 years ago the vast majority of Americans died at home surrounded by family and loved ones.  Today, the vast majority of Americans die alone in a hospital, surrounded by machines.  Moreover, a gap between when a person dies and when the family thinks they are dead can become very wide; i.e., the definition of death is not always clear.  Meanwhile, “hospice” (which was founded in England a century ago by midwife Cicely Saunders), is a practice that tries to close this gap; once a person is within six months of dying, hospice advocates discontinue all treatments, giving palliative care (pain relief), along with a midwifery model of support.  Each dying person has a team that works with them to make sure they are comfortable and have everything they need.  Hospice has many problems, though.  Its rules vary from state to state and, because it is composed mostly of volunteers, it varies even within a state.  It is often difficult to determine when a person is six months from death, so in many cases, hospice enters too late.  The midwifery model even extends beyond death to the care of the body.  How is a corpse dealt with and who gets to decide that?  Family?  Religious leaders?  Lawmakers?  Land developers? 

            No one is discrediting the great advantages medicine has brought to our world, even or especially at birth and death.  What this class is arguing for is a conversation that tries to recover some of the best practices of earlier or more female centered models of care. “Interpreting Bodies” revisits the discourse of midwifery, which argues that the processes of birth and death are not illnesses that need to be cured, but rather are normal and natural events in the course of a life.  Instead of using drugs and technology to manage these events, midwifery seeks the path of “being with” the patient through these changes, and only using drugs or technology to assist a natural transition.  What is this process of “being with” and how does it differ from the ways we are treated in medical settings today? 

Evaluation

Paper 1: Explain why hospital births are standard care in America.  Is the material around midwifery persuasive to you and if it is, why is it still thought of as outmoded and old-fashioned.  If you support hospital births, explain why they are thought of as best practice, and for whom.  5–10 pages 30%

Paper 2: What assumptions are circulating in medical and religious language that block the idea of a good death?  Or using two sources from outside class, explain why green deaths may or (may not) become the wave of the future 5–10 pages 40%

The remaining 30% will be based on your attendance, participation, and general presence toward course material.

Please, no electronic devices in this class.

Book List

Section One: Midwives of Birth

Ladies Hands, Lion’s Heart, Carol Leonard

Cut it Out, Theresa Morris

Section Two: Midwives of Death

Being Mortal, Atul Gawande

Greening Death,  Suzanne Kelly

This course explores musical experience according to three different dimensions: first, music as a social phenomenon, second as an emotional one, and finally as transcendental (aka ineffable, spiritual, sublime, holy). Examples are drawn from African-American music in New Orleans, popular music, jazz, Bach and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the Romantics, sacred music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, John Coltrane, and Gospel.

Each of us already has a sense of music as a social phenomenon.  We like a certain kind of music, in part, is because it helps define our peer group, social class, and self-identity as a rebellious person, a conformist, and so on.  All music is socially conceived, but some kinds of music invest heavily in this project.  Many genres of African-American music, for example, are designed to bring people together in a participatory way.  The inquiry extends to the use of music as a way to energize ideologies.

Most people are also aware of their own emotional experience of music, but it is possible to go further.  We have been taught how to articulate emotions in socialized ways, and this can be observed musically. Musical gestures correspond with feelings. This section of the course includes readings on emotions, neuroscience and music. 

It is challenging to talk about music as a transcendental phenomenon, but that does not invalidate the experience.  For the nineteenth-century Romantics, music was the queen of the arts because of its ability to transport listeners into ethereal realms.  African-American churches rely on music to do the same thing as they try to connect with the Holy Spirit.  We may separate the themes of social, emotional and transcendental for analytical purposes, but in the end they are closely connected. This is demonstrated by another African-American example: the participatory music-making of nineteenth-century slaves was primarily social at the same time that it was intensely emotional and also transcendental, the latter indicated by the name of the great body of music that emerged—the Spirituals.

*New Course*

Readers are always surprised by the modernity of Boccaccio’s stores of desire, deception, and delight: how can a fourteenth-century work speak so clearly to twenty-first century readers, especially on the topic of gender? This course investigates this question by exploring both Boccaccio’s narrative masterpiece, the Decameron, and his other works, including the first collection of women’s lives, On Famous Women. Examining critical debates about Boccaccio’s proto-feminism and the apparent misogyny of the Corbaccio, we will scrutinize how Boccaccio uses literature to create a new space for women and their wit as well as other models of desire. Our attention will focus on the Decameron, but we will also examine the distraught lover that narrates Europe’s first psychological novel, the Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta; the many nymphs that populate both the Ameto and the Nymphs of Fiesole; the lives of mythological and real women recounted in his Genealogies of the Gentile Gods and On Famous Women; and his manipulation of misogynistic discourse in the Corbaccio. Far from being a work of the past, Boccaccio suggests radical new paths forward.