Medicine, Identity, and Technology in Modern History
MODULE HANDBOOK 2008/9
Contents
Course Details Statement of Aims and Learning Outcomes Teaching Methods, Workload, and Assessment Outline of Teaching/Discussion Questions Texts, Readings, and Media Sources Guide to Seminars and Readings Media Journal Guidelines 2 Course Details:
Module Leader: Roberta Bivins Lectures: Tuesdays, 4-5, Room S2.81 Seminars: Tuesdays, 5-6, Room S0.13 Email: [email protected]
This year, we will explore the impact of often-controversial medical, scientific and technological innovations on individual, familial/community and national identities: in other words, their impact on how we know who we are – and how we identify others. We will look at a range of case studies including:
Reproductive technologies (from adoption to the Pill to IVF and its successors); Diagnostic technologies from the ultrasound to genetic screening; Imperial medicine; Biotechnologies of identification (from fingerprint databases to genomics) Organ and tissue transplantation; ‘Big medicine’, in the form of the Human Genome and Human Genetic Diversity Projects.
Using the evidence offered by these examples, we will ask if any or all of them have changed the ways in which people think of themselves, their families, and the cultures and nations in which they live. By the end of the year, students will be able to describe and assess the roles of medicine and technologies in transforming notions of identity at the individual, familial and national levels, from the 19th century to the present. ‘Medicine, Identity, and Technology in Modern History’ is designed to complement the first-year History core course (‘The Making of the Modern World, 1750- 2000'), as well as adding to existing History option courses, by introducing you to the histories of technology and medicine, and to science and technology studies. It will acquaint you with historical, anthropological, sociological, and ethical approaches to medicine and technology (particularly in the 20th century), and add interdisciplinary skills to your repertoire for research, thinking, and writing across all modules that may be taken by them.
Statement of Aims and Learning Outcomes By the end of the module the student should be able to: Describe the history of reproductive technologies; biomedical technologies of identification; imperial and international interactions between medicine and identity; organ and tissue transplantation; ‘big medicine’ initiatives including the Human Genome Project and Human Genetic Diversity Project. Describe the relationship between such technologies and changes in understandings of ‘identity’ at the individual, familial and national levels, and over time.
3 Use a variety of scholarly approaches to assess medicine, science and technology. Engage with and analyse media representations of medicine, science, and technology. Reflect on themselves as patients and consumers of medical ideas and technologies, produced in and shaped by particular social and educational circumstances, and to discuss their counterparts in the past in similar terms.
Teaching Methods, Workload, and Assessment This module is taught by weekly lectures and seminars (1x1 hours each), and by individual tutorials to discuss essays and offer feedback.
Assessment: First year (and Part-time Level One) students are assessed on the basis of two short (2000 words, excluding notes and bibliography) essays (50% of final mark) and one long (4500, excluding notes and bibliography) word essay (50% of final mark).
Second year (and Part-time Honours-level) students may choose between a 3- hour, three question exam paper OR a 2-hour, two question paper, plus a 4500 word (excluding notes and bibliography) essay.
All students will also keep a media journal, from which they will present at least one entry over the course of the module. Journal and presentation are non- assessed, but must be submitted to qualify for completion. See ‘Media Journal Guidelines’, p. 25-6.
Students may choose their own essay topics, subject to my approval, which must be obtained in advance. Alternatively, students may wish to choose from the topics below.
*****Note that significant overlaps in content between different pieces of assessed work (e.g. essay topics, exam answers, or overlaps between assessed essay topics and exam answers) will be penalized.*****
4,500 word essays: Compare and contrast the role and use of genetics in surveillance and either medical screening, or reproductive technologies. What is the impact of genetics on identity in each of these fields, and how has the rise of genetic science and genetic technologies changed each of them? Analyze the relationship and interactions between medicine, technology and national identity. You should compare the human genome project with at least one other technology/medical intervention. Include assessments of historical context in your argument. Explore the impact of national history on responses to new biomedical and/or surveillance technologies, comparing at least two different technologies or nations. Compare the impact of older and newer responses to reproduction (say adoption and abortion vs the NRTs and screening technologies) on historical and contemporary understandings of ‘motherhood’, ‘fatherhood’ and ‘the family’.
4 What factors have contributed to the increasing popularity of biogenetic understandings of identity and family? Answer this question by comparing specific examples from the past and present.
2000 word essays: ‘Technologies of identification created different kinds of identity in colonised and colonising nations’. Discuss. The new reproductive technologies have changed the meaning of ‘motherhood’. Discuss. Historically, medicine has played a crucial role in building national identities. Discuss. Who has benefited most from the new medical technologies of visualization? ‘Genetics and genomics offer useful historical information’. Discuss. Compare and contrast the impacts of ‘scientific motherhood’ and ‘the patient role’ on women. ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear from DNA databases’. Discuss. Adoption is a reproductive technology. Argue for or against.
Essay due dates: Short Essay 1: Due no later than 4PM Monday, Week 9, Term 1
Short essay 2: Due no later than 4PM Monday, Week 9, Term 2
Long essay: See departmental guidelines for due date.
Marking scale: For general information on marking scales at the University of Warwick, see p.27.
In this module, I will follow the standard departmental marking criteria.
5 Outline of Teaching/Discussion Questions
Term 1 Doctored Identities: personal, familial, and national Week Lecture Seminar 1 Introduction: ‘Who do you think you are?’ No Seminar Theme One: Medicine, science, and the family 2 Making Motherhood No Seminar 3 Reproduction and revolution: money, What is a reproductive technology, and why medicine, and the Pill are they so controversial? 4 Who’s the daddy? Genetics and parental Blood, genes and the modern ‘family’ identity 5 Inheriting Illness part 1: genes, families, Risk, blame and (social) responsibility: the and cultural identities new Eugenics? 6 Reading Week Theme 2 Medical visions and the individual 7 What the eye doesn’t see: ultrasound and The politics of ‘personhood’ and the ‘unborn’ ‘parenthood’ 8 Visualization and professionalization: Authority, images and infants focusing on the fetus 9 Inheriting Illness part 2: genes, families, Diagnosis, prognosis, and risk in the and the patient role genetic age: censoring the body? 10 The international perspective No Seminar
Term 2 Medicine and identity from imperialism to the cold war Week Lecture Seminar Theme 3 Global medicine and national identities: Subjects, citizens, and ‘civilization’ 1 Imperial medicine and the ‘civilising No Seminar mission’ 2 Trade, disease, and international health ‘Weak States’, SARS and health for all 3 Doctoring National Identity What role did medicine play in the creation/demise of ‘White Australia’? Theme 4 Identity and identification: linking the self to the skin 4 Identifying the ‘Other’: imperial The power is in the details fingerprints 5 Myths and measurements: anthropometry No Seminar 6 Reading Week 7 Identity, privacy and technology: DNA Security, suspicion, and the consumption of fingerprints and CCTV identification Theme 5 Bodies and the body politic: life, death and organ transplantation 8 Tissues and treatments: organ ‘Medicine gone mad’: Nazis, Nuremburg, transplantation in post-war Germany and national identity 9 Organs and ownership Do we own ourselves? 10 Brain-dead: medical morality in the non- Culture and the social self western world
6 Term 3 Medicine and Technology in the ‘New World Order’ Week Lecture Seminar 1 ‘Sicko’ Theme 6 Genomics, communities and national identities 2 Big medicine? History and the Human Is genetics the new history? Genome Project 3 Contentious communities: the Human Re-coding or de-coding history? Genetic Diversity Project 4 Conclusions No Seminar (optional revision session)
Texts, Readings, and Media Sources Most readings will be drawn from journals, and will be available as electronic resources from JSTOR and PROJECT MUSE. If you are not familiar with these resources, see me SOON! The books below are required either in their entirety or in part. We will read larger sections of books marked with a *. These will be held at SHORT LOAN, and, where possible, a few copies will be available for purchase at the University Bookstore. *Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2006). Bridie Andrews and Andrew Cunningham, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1997). *Alison Bashford, ed., Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). *Simon Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprints and Criminal Identification (Cambridge MA: Harvard, 2001). *Donna Dickenson, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008). Jose van Dijck, Imagenation: Popular Images of Genetics, (Macmillan Press, 1998) *Kaja Finkler, Experiencing the New Genetics: Family and kinship on the medical frontier. (Philadelphia: UPenn, 2000). *Linda Hogle Recovering the Nation’s Body: Cultural Memory Medicine and the Politics of Redemption (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1999). *Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity with a new preface by the author (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). Dan Kevles and Leroy Hood (eds) The Code of Codes: Scientific and social issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge MA: Harvard, 1992). Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health (Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1996). *Lara Marks, Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). *Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H.Freeman and Co, 1995). Jenny Reardon, Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Michelle Stanworth, Reproductive technologies: gender, motherhood and medicine, (Oxford: Polity press, 1987). Maragarete Sandelowski, Devices and desires: gender, technology and American nursing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). *Chandak Sengoopta, Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2003).
Films: The Return of Martin Guerre; Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life; John Q; Junior; Born with Two Mothers, The Family Man, Sicko, Nazi Medicine: in the Shadow of the Reich, Lorenzo’s Oil, Batchelor Mother
7 Term 1 Fall
Week 1 Introduction: ‘Who do you think you are?’ What forms the basis of an individual’s identity? What about the identities that we apply to the people we see around us? How do we answer the question: ‘who do you think I am?’ What other types of ‘identity’ are there, and how can (and do) we assess, evaluate and apply them? This week we will explore the contemporary identities that define us today, and sketch out their historical origins.
No Required Reading
Theme One: Medicine, science, and the family Week 2 Making Motherhood It’s something of a truism that we take our mothers for granted –OK, so we may spring for chocolates or flowers on Mothering Sunday, but the rest of the year, their ‘motherliness’ is assumed rather than scrutinised or celebrated. Our culture, however, and our medical culture in particular, takes ‘motherhood’ very seriously indeed. Today, we will explore the role of medicine in shaping our perceptions, expectations, and understandings of motherhood from the late 19th century to the present. Why and when did doctors get into the business of offering mothers advice on pregnancy, birth, and childrearing? And who benefited most from their interventions? Did anyone lose out? How different is the relationship between motherhood and medicine today from the one that existed in at the turn of the 20th century?
Seminar topic: NO SEMINAR
Required Reading: Rima Apple ‘Constructing mothers: scientific motherhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ in Apple and Golden (eds), Mothers and Motherhood, 90- 110 OR in Social history of medicine, Vol. 8, no. 2 (Aug. 1995), via Oxford Journals Archive online at University of Warwick Library. Michelle Stanworth, ‘Reproductive technologies and the deconstruction of motherhood’, in Stanworth, Reproductive technologies: gender, motherhood and medicine, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987): 10-35.
Background and Further Reading: Film: Batchelor Mother, 1939 Rima Apple, Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America (New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers University Press, 2006) Board for Social Responsibility, ‘Marriage and the Family’ in Ruth Chadwick (ed.), Ethics, Reproduction and Genetic Control, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 1992): 53-62 Sarah-Vaughn Brakman, Sally J. Scholz, ‘Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity’, Hypatia, Vol. 21, Number 1, Winter 2006, pp. 54-73 Fenella Cannell, ‘Concepts of Parenthood: The Warnock Report, the Gillick Debate, and Modern Myths’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 667-686 Robert Griswold, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1993) Ellen Herman, “Families Made by Science: Arnold Gesell and the Technologies of Modern Child Adoption” Isis 92, 2001: 684-715.
8 Ellen Herman, ‘The Paradoxical Rationalization of Modern Adoption’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, Number 2, Winter 2002, pp. 339-385. Beth Kohl, Embryo Culture: Making Babies in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2007) (A very funny, if blunt, first hand account of attaining ‘motherhood’ with NRTs: Compare to Batchelor Mother) Hilary Rose, ‘Victorian values in a test tube: The Politics of Reproductive Science’, in Stanworth, Reproductive technologies: gender, motherhood and medicine, (Oxford: Polity press, 1987):151-173 Barbara Yngvesson, ‘Negotiating Motherhood: Identity and Difference in "Open" Adoptions’, Law & Society Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (1997), pp. 31-80
Week 3 Reproduction and revolution: money, medicine, and the Pill It sparked the Sexual Revolution. It was the death of the family. It’s a ‘life saver’ and a ‘stealth killer’, the liberator of women, and (heterosexual) men’s excuse for reproductive irresponsibility. The birth control pill has a lot to answer for, at least if the media hype is to be believed. But where did it come from, who developed it, and why? What social, medical, and moral effects can legitimately be attributed to the emergence of reliable, female fertility control in the developed world? Has the Pill changed the world – and was it ever supposed to?
Seminar topic: What is a reproductive technology, and why are they so controversial? Are adoption and birth control ‘reproductive technologies’? Why or why not? How have they historically and how do they today shape individual and familial identity? Is the nature of femininity/motherhood different for women who adopt their children, or control their fertility with the Pill (or by other means?)? What about the nature of masculinity and fatherhood?
Required Reading:
Beth Bailey ‘Prescribing the Pill: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Summer, 1997), pp. 827-856. Suzanne White Junod, ‘Perspectives on the Pill: An Essay Review’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 57, Number 3, July 2002, pp. 333- 339.
AND ONE item from the list below.
Simone M. Caron, ‘Birth Control and the Black Community in the 1960s: Genocide or Power Politics?’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Spring, 1998), pp. 545-569. Ellen Herman, “Families Made by Science: Arnold Gesell and the Technologies of Modern Child Adoption” Isis 92, 2001: 684-715. Nelly Oudshoorn, ‘On Masculinities, Technologies, and Pain: The Testing of Male Contraceptives in the Clinic and the Media’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 265- 289.
Background and Further Reading:
9 See the alternative readings above, and: Bernard Asbell, The pill: a biography of the drug that changed the world (New York, New York, Random House, 1995). Adele Clarke and Theresa Montini ‘The Many Faces of RU486: Tales of Situated Knowledges and Technological Contestations’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 18, No. 1, Theme Issue: Technological Choices (Winter, 1993), pp. 42-78. Suzanne White Junod, Lara Marks, ‘Women's Trials: The Approval of the First Oral Contraceptive Pill in the United States and Great Britain’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol 57, Number 2, April 2002, pp. 117-160. Amy Kaler, ‘A Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men: The Banning of Depo- Provera in Zimbabwe, 1981’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 347-376. Jessika van Kammen, ‘Representing Users' Bodies: The Gendered Development of Anti- Fertility Vaccines’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 307-337. Marcia Meldrum, ‘“Simple Methods" and "Determined Contraceptors": The Statistical Evaluation of Fertility Control, 1957-1968’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 70, Number 2, Summer 1996, pp. 266-295. Peter Neushul, ‘Marie C. Stopes and the Popularization of Birth Control Technology’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Apr., 1998), pp. 245-272 James Reed, ‘Public Policy on Human Reproduction and the Historian’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1985), pp. 383-398. James Reed, The Birth Control Movement in American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1978). Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950- 1970. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Richard A. Soloway, ‘The “Perfect Contraceptive”: Eugenics and Birth Control Research in Britain and America in the Interwar Years’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 637-664. Andrea Tone, Devices & Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001). Andrea Tone, ed. Controlling Reproduction: An American History (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1997) Chapters 5 and 7. (You can skim the ‘Documents’)
Week 4 Who’s the daddy? Genetics and parental identity ‘Blood is thicker than water’: that’s the truism that most of us grew up with. But blood ties have never been the sole, or even necessarily the most socially powerful marker of kinship either in our culture or globally. Today, we will look at different models of ‘parenthood’ and different understandings of ‘kinship’, as they have emerged over the course of the last 150 years, and assess the impacts that science and technology have had on these fundamental social structures. We will focus in particular on ‘fatherhood’, ‘social’, ‘biological’, and ‘fractured’.
Seminar topic: Blood, genes, and the modern ‘family’ Have our models of ‘family’ become more or less biological since the introduction of the new reproductive technologies? Have NRTs acted inclusively or exclusively in western culture and society? Where does the nature/nurture debate fit into this changing picture?
Required Reading:
Cynthia R Daniels, Janet Golden, ‘Procreative Compounds: Popular Eugenics, Artificial Insemination and the Rise of the American Sperm Banking Industry’, Journal of Social History, Vol 38, Number 1, Fall 2004, pp. 5-27.
10 Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, ‘Chapter 4, The Molecular Family’, in their The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H.Freeman and Co, 1995).
. Jon Turney, Frankenstein’s Footsteps: Science, genetics and popular culture (London: Yale University Press, 1998), ‘Chapter 8: Baby of the Century’. (Read if you have time, for analysis of public/media perceptions of new reproductive technologies)
Background and Further Reading: *Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, “Chapter 1, The Powers of the Gene”, in their The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H.Freeman and Co, 1995) If you feel a bit lost, and want a clear and funny introduction to the place of the gene in pop culture, this is the chapter for you! Films: Junior, Children of Men; The Midwife’s Tale, In the Family Gay Becker, The Elusive Embryo: How Men and Women Approach New Reproductive Technologies (Berkeley: University of Californa Press, 2000) ‘Introduction’, ‘Chapter 4: Genes and Generations’, Chapter 8 ‘Decisions about Donors’. Kim M. Blankenship, Beth Rushing, Suzanne A. Onorato and Renee White, ‘Reproductive Technologies and the U.S. Courts’, Gender and Society, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 8-31. Fenella Cannell, ‘Concepts of Parenthood: The Warnock Report, the Gillick Debate, and Modern Myths’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 667-686. Ruth F. Chadwick (ed.), Ethics, reproduction and genetic control (London : Croom Helm, 1987). Nathaniel Comfort, ‘"Polyhybrid Heterogeneous Bastards": Promoting Medical Genetics in America in the 1930s and 1940s’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 61, Number 4, October 2006, pp. 415-455. Cynthia R. Daniels, ‘Between Fathers and Fetuses: The Social Construction of Male Reproduction and the Politics of Fetal Harm’, Signs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Spring, 1997), pp. 579-616. Jose Van Dyck (also Dijck), Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating the New Reproductive Technologies (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1995), “Introduction’ and ‘Chapter 6: From Need to Right: The Legalization of Genetic Motherhood’. Jeanette Edwards, Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive technologies in England (Oxford: OUP, 2000) esp. Chapters 8 and 9. Ellen Herman, ‘The Paradoxical Rationalization of Modern Adoption’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, Number 2, Winter 2002, pp. 339-385. Judith Walzer Leavitt, ‘What Do Men Have to Do with It? Fathers and Mid-Twentieth- Century Childbirth’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 77, Number 2, Summer 2003, pp. 235-262. Charlene E. Miall, ‘The Stigma of Adoptive Parent Status: Perceptions of Community Attitudes toward Adoption and the Experience of Informal Social Sanctioning’, Family Relations, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 34-39. Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, “Chapter 8, Genetic Essentialism Applied”, in their The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H.Freeman and Co, 1995). Irma van der Ploeg ‘Hermaphrodite Patients: In Vitro Fertilization and the Transformation of Male Infertility’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 460-481. Seline Szkupinski Quiroga, ‘Blood Is Thicker than Water: Policing Donor Insemination and the Reproduction of Whiteness’, Hypatia, Vol. 22, Number 2, Spring 2007, pp. 143-161 BEWARE (but don’t be afraid): this article is full of jargon. But don’t be put off: focus on Quiroga’s useful discussion of biological vs social kinship and especially her very clear comments on the ‘privileging of genetic kinship’.
11 Helena Ragoné, ‘Chasing the Blood Tie: Surrogate Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Fathers’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 352-365. Margarete Sandelowski, ‘Compelled to Try: The Never-Enough Quality of Conceptive Technology’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 29-47. Lucinda Vandervort, ‘Reproductive Choice: Screening Policy and Access to the Means of Reproduction’, Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 2, May 2006, pp. 438- 464.
Week 5 Inheriting Illness part 1: genes, families, and cultural identities Our understandings of parenthood are not the only ones to be seriously challenged by new technologies and new biochemical models of heredity. More and more traits (musicality, sexuality, tendency to addiction) and diseases (breast cancer, hypertension, sickle cell and thalassaemia) are – at least in the popular media! -- linked to ‘genes’. What does this mean for our ideas of family? Our culture privileges an idealised (and today biological) model of family. But we also expect individuals to ‘take responsibility’ not just for their fertility but for their health and that of their progeny. How do these social expectations affect carriers of genetically transmitted conditions, and their families?
Seminar topic: Risk, blame and (social) responsibility: the new Eugenics? Should we blame people, or cultures, for the ‘genetic burdens’ they (might!) impose on societies? What would this mean for them, for the disabled, and for us as members of a society? Would we inevitably end up with a GATTACA-style dystopia? Or is there a way to use genetic screening to benefit not just society, but individuals as well?
Required Reading: Dipesh Gadher, Christopher Morgan and Jonathan Oliver, ‘Minister warns of “inbred” Muslims’, The Sunday Times, February 10, 2008 www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3342040.ece (See also the readers’ comments on this story; we’ll discuss this in seminar) Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity with a new preface by the author (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995): Chapters XVII-XIX (This is about 50 pages, but should be a pretty quick read if you focus on the examples and trends Kevles describes, and don’t get too bogged down with names and dates!) Santi Rozario, ‘Genetics, Religion and Identity among British Bangladeshis: Some Initial Findings.’ Diversity in Health and Social Care 2(3) 2005: pp.187-196. (This short article offers an alternative perspective on the phenomenon described in the Sunday Times article – skim for our seminar discussion)
For a vision of fertility control’s dark side, see: Nancy Ordover, ‘New Technologies, Old Politics: Norplant and Beyond’, in Ordover, American Eugenics: Queer Anatomy and the Science of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) pp. 179- 194
Background and Further Reading: Films: Lorenzo’s Oil, GATTACA Rebecca Bennet and John Harris, ‘Are there lives not worth living? When is it Wrong to Reproduce?’, in Donna L. Dickenson (ed.), Ethical Issues in Maternal-Fetal Medicine (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): pp. 321-334.
12 Morgan Clarke, ‘Closeness in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Debating Kinship and Biomedicine in Lebanon and the Middle East’, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 80, Number 2, Spring 2007, pp. 379-402 Angus Clarke, Evelyn Parsons (eds), Culture, Kinship and Genes: Towards Cross- Cultural Genetics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997) Panayiotis Ioannou, ‘Thalassemia Prevention in Cyprus’, in Ruth Chadwick, Darren Shickle, et al (eds), The Ethics of Genetic Screening (London: Kluwer, 1999): pp. 55- 67 Anne Kerr, Sarah Cunningham-Burley, and Amanda Amos, ‘Eugenics and the New Genetics in Britain: Examining Contemporary Professionals' Accounts’ Science, Technology and Human Values 23(2) 1998:175-98. Hans-Peter Kroner, ‘From Eugenics to Genetic Screening: Historical Problems of Human Genetic Applications’, in Ruth Chadwick, Darren Shickle, et al (eds), The Ethics of Genetic Screening (London: Kluwer, 1999): pp. 131-145. Jean McHale, ‘Is there a Duty not to Reproduce?’ in Donna L. Dickenson (ed.), Ethical Issues in Maternal-Fetal Medicine (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): pp.101-112 Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co, 1995) Annette Patterson, Martha Satz, ‘Genetic Counseling and the Disabled: Feminism Examines the Stance of Those Who Stand at the Gate’, Hypatia, Vol. 17, Number 3, Summer 2002, pp. 118-142 (Article) Rayna Rapp, ‘Amniocentesis in Sociocultural Perspective’, Journal of Genetic Counseling 2, 1993:183-196. Rayna Rapp, "Ethnocultural Diversity and Genetic Counseling Training: the Challenge of the 21st Century," Journal of Genetic Counseling, vol. 2, 1993 pp. 155-158. Rayna Rapp ‘Refusing Prenatal Diagnosis: The Meanings of Bioscience in a Multicultural World’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 23, No. 1, (Winter, 1998), pp. 45-70 Rayna Rapp. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (New York: Routledge, 1999) Shelley Reuter, ‘The Genuine Jewish Type: Racial Ideology and Anti-Immigrationism in Early Medical Writing about Tay-Sachs Disease’, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 31, Number 3, Summer 2006, pp. 291-323 Santi Rozario, Sophie Gilliat-Ray, ‘Genetics, Religion and Identity: A Study of British Bangladeshis’ (2004-7).’ Cardiff University School of Social Sciences Working Paper No.93. 2007. (Available to download at: www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/research/publications/workingpapers/Paper%2093.html Charles E. Rosenberg ‘The Tyranny of Diagnosis: Specific Entities and Individual Experience’, The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 2 (2002), pp. 237-260. Peter Wade (ed.), Race, ethnicity and nation: perspectives from kinship and genetics (New York : Berghahn Books, 2007). SHORT LOAN
Week 6 Reading Week: NO MEETING
Theme 2 Medical visions and the individual Week 7 What the eye doesn’t see: ultrasound, monitoring, and the ‘unborn’ Since the emergence of the X-ray, medical technologies have gradually blurred the sharp distinctions between the interior and the exterior, the visible and the invisible aspects of the human body. Now, the intimate details of reproduction are apparently ‘visible’, the gravid uterus – like many other structures of the body -- rendered ‘transparent’ by complicated machinery and
13 algorithms. What effect has this had on our understandings of ourselves, and on our decisions about when a fetus becomes a person?
Seminar topic: The politics of ‘personhood’ and ‘parenthood’ When does a woman become a mother, responsible socially and legally for the wellbeing of her child? Do men become fathers at the some time and in the same way? Who qualifies as a person in our culture, and what effect have technologies of visualization had on our perceptions of ‘personhood’?
Required Reading: Read at least TWO from the list below: Laury Oaks, ‘Smoke-Filled Wombs and Fragile Fetuses: The Social Politics of Fetal Representation’, Signs, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 63-108. JSTOR/Project MUSE Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, "Foetal Images: the Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction," in Michele Stanworth (ed), Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1987) OR VIA JSTOR: Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, "Foetal Images: the Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction,", Feminist Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 263-292 Margarete Sandelowski, ‘Separate, but Less Unequal: Fetal Ultrasonography and the Transformation of Expectant Mother/Fatherhood’, Gender and Society, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun., 1994). JSTOR Janelle S. Taylor, ‘Of Sonograms and Baby Prams: Prenatal Diagnosis, Pregnancy, and Consumption’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, Women and Health (Summer, 2000), pp. 391-418. JSTOR
Background and Further Reading: Beth A. Conklin, Lynn M. Morgan, ‘Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society,’ Ethos, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 657-694. Jose van Dijck, The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imagining (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005) ‘Chapter 6: The Ultrasound and the visible fetus’. Gillian Harris, Linda Connor, Andrew Bisits and Nick Higginbotham ‘"Seeing the Baby": Pleasures and Dilemmas of Ultrasound Technologies for Primiparous Australian Women’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 23-47. Bettyann Holtzman Kevles Naked to the bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997) ‘Chapter 10: Looking Through Women’. Lesley Larkin, ‘Authentic Mothers, Authentic Daughters and Sons: Ultrasound Imaging and the Construction of Fetal Sex and Gender’, Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 36, Number 3, 2006, pp. 273-291. Susan Markens, C. H. Browner, Nancy Press ‘Feeding the Fetus: On Interrogating the Notion of Maternal-Fetal Conflict’ Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 351-372. Lisa M. Mitchell, Baby's First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Lisa M. Mitchell and Eugenia Georges, ‘Cross-Cultural Cyborgs: Greek and Canadian Women's Discourses on Fetal Ultrasound’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, (Summer, 1997), pp. 373-401. JSTOR
14 Susan Merrill Squier. Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Janelle S. Taylor, ‘Image of Contradiction: Obstetrical Ultrasound in American Culture’, in Sarah Franklin and Helena Ragone, eds, Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
Week 8 Visualization and professionalization: focusing on the fetus Parents are not the only people affected by the technologies of visualisation; new medical professions have grown up around the newly visible ‘patient’, the fetus. The morality and authority of these new professions is contested, within medicine and in the lay world. And the roles of established professions – for example, nursing – have also changed in response. To what degree have these changes been driven by the emergence of new politics and identities, and to what extent have they been driven by the technologies themselves?
Seminar topic: Authority, images and infants We think of the medical images we see as ‘transparent’ reflections of the real world, albeit a real world hidden from ordinary sight. But to what extent does their power emerge from their self- evidence, and to what extent does it emerge from the authority granted to them by medical professionals? Who does, and who should control the images created by these medical technologies?
Required Reading: TIP: Read Leavitt, then Sandelowski, then Georges! Eugenia Georges, ‘Fetal Ultrasound Imaging and the Production of Authoritative Knowledge in Greece’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Jun., 1996), pp. 157-175 [READ THIRD] Judith Walzer Leavitt, ‘The Growth of Medical Authority: Technology and Morals in Turn-of-the-Century Obstetrics’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), pp. 230-255 [READ FIRST] Maragarete Sandelowski, Devices and desires: gender, technology and American nursing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). ‘Chapter 6 Spectacular Nursing’ (pp. 135-175) [READ SECOND]
Background and Further Reading: Monica J. Casper, ‘At the Margins of Humanity: Fetal Positions in Science and Medicine’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer, 1994), pp. 307-323 Cynthia R. Daniels, ‘Between Fathers and Fetuses: The Social Construction of Male Reproduction and the Politics of Fetal Harm’, Signs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Spring, 1997), pp. 579-616 Joe Dumit, Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), "Chapter 5: Traveling Images, Popularizing Brains". Read this to compare and contrast the social/pop cultural impacts of brain imaging and fetal imaging. M. Jean Heriot ‘Fetal Rights versus the Female Body: Contested Domains’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Jun., 1996), pp. 176-194. Joseph G. Ryan, The Chapel and the Operating Room: The Struggle of Roman Catholic Clergy, Physicians, and Believers with the Dilemmas of Obstetric Surgery, 1800- 1900’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 76, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 461-494
15 Week 9 Inheriting Illness part 2: genes, families, and the patient role What does it mean to be ‘sick’? When and why do we define ourselves to be ‘patients’? Today we will examine the ‘patient identity’ and the related phenomenon of ‘medicalization’, and explore the ways in which new genetic technologies have affected our understandings of health and the risk of illness. Seminar topic: Diagnosis, prognosis, and risk in the genetic age: censoring the body? Compare and contrast the roles of new medical knowledge and technology in the cases of ‘Typhoid Mary’ and ‘Experiencing the new genetics. What is medicalization, and is it new? Are the implications different for genetic, rather than bacteriological ‘carriers’?
Required Reading: Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), Chapters 1-3. Kaja Finkler, Experiencing the New Genetics: Family and kinship on the medical frontier. (Philadelphia: Upenn Press, 2000), Chapters ‘5: People with a Genetic History I: patients without symptoms’, ‘6 People with a Genetic History II: recovered patients’, and ‘8: The Ideology of Genetic Inheritance in Contemporary Life: The medicalization of kinship’
Background and Further Reading: Gibbon, Sarah. 2002. "Re-Examining Geneticization: Family Trees in Breast Cancer Genetics." Science as Culture, 11(4): 429-459. Raul Necochea, ‘From Cancer Families to HNPCC: Henry Lynch and the Transformations of Hereditary Cancer, 1975-1999’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 81, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 267-285 (Article) Paolo Palladino, ‘Between Knowledge and Practice: On Medical Professionals, Patients, and the Making of the Genetics of Cancer’. Social Studies of Science 32(1) 2002:137- 166. Nancy Press, Jennifer R. Fishman, and Barbara A. Koenig. 2000. ‘Collective Fear, Individualized Risk: The Social and Cultural Context of Genetic Testing for Breast Cancer’, Nursing Ethics 7(3): 237-249. Dorothy Nelkin and Laurence Tancredi, Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information. New York: Basic Books, 1989 Nancy G. Slack, ‘Review: Biological Diagnostics: Boon and Bane’, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1991), pp. 38-40 Stuart S. Blume, The Rhetoric and Counter-Rhetoric of a "Bionic" Technology, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 31-56 (cochlear implants)
Week 10 The international perspective Today we will take a moment to look at responses to new medical technologies beyond the West, focusing on what is perhaps the most widely available new reproductive technology: the Pill. Do different cultures integrate medical technologies differently? Do different models of ‘family’ and ‘individuality’ affect the relative (no pun intended!) impact of such technologies on social and cultural identity? What effect do the particularities of national history have on different nations’ responses to new medical technologies?
Seminar topic: NO SEMINAR
16 Required Reading: Amy Kaler, ‘A Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men: The Banning of Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe, 1981’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 347-376 Lara Marks, Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), Chapters 8, 9. Tiana Norgren, ‘Abortion before Birth Control: The Interest Group Politics Behind Postwar Japanese Reproduction Policy’, Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), pp. 59-94. JSTOR
Background and Further Reading: Deborah Cordero Fiedler, ‘Authoritative Knowledge and Birth Territories in Contemporary Japan’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 10, No. 2, (Jun., 1996), pp. 195-212. JSTOR Nobutaka Ike, ‘Birth Control in Japan’, Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 17, No. 23 (Dec. 8, 1948), pp. 271-274. JSTOR Leo A. Orleans ‘Birth Control: Reversal or Postponement?’, The China Quarterly, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1960), pp. 59-70. JSTOR
Spring Term Medicine and identity from imperialism to the cold war
Theme 3 Global medicine and national identities: Subjects, citizens, and ‘civilization’ Week 1 Imperial medicine and the ‘civilising mission’ Today, we will begin to explore the historical roots of the contemporary relationship between medicine, identity, and technology. How did medicine (and medical professionals) come to have moral authority, and to be involved in national and international politics and policy making? And how has medical involvement in global politics in the past shaped the national and international politics of identity today?
Seminar topic: NO SEMINAR
Required Reading: Tip: Read the Worboys article first, then Anderson, then Ticktin.
Miriam Ticktin, ‘Medical Humanitarianism in and Beyond France: Breaking Down or Patrolling Borders’, in Alison Bashford, ed., Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006): SHORT LOAN Michael Worboys, ‘The Colonial World as Mission and Mandate: Leprosy and Empire, 1900-1940’, Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 15, Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise (2000), pp. 207-218 JSTOR Warwick Anderson, ‘Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the poetics of pollution’, in Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker (eds), Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 2001): pp. 76-105.
17 Background and Further Reading: The Berlin Exhibition of Hygiene In 1882-83’, Science, Vol. 6, No. 127 (Jul. 10, 1885), pp. 36-37. JSTOR Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines, (Durham NC.: Duke University Press, 2006): Chapters 2,6,7. Morag Bell, 'The Pestilence That Walketh in Darkness'. Imperial Health, Gender and Images of South Africa c. 1880-1910’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1993), pp. 327-341 JSTOR Rudolf Mrazek "Let Us Become Radio Mechanics": Technology and National Identity in Late-Colonial Netherlands East Indies Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 3-33 Nancy Ordover, ‘National Hygiene: Twentieth Century Immigration and the Eugenics Lobby’, in Ordover, American Eugenics: Queer Anatomy and the Science of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) pp. 1-56. James C. Scott, John Tehranian and Jeremy Mathias The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 4-44 Ronen Shamir and Daphna Hacker, Colonialism's Civilizing Mission: The Case of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission’, Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 435-461 JSTOR Lynn M. Thomas, ‘Imperial Concerns and 'Women's Affairs': State Efforts to Regulate Clitoridectomy and Eradicate Abortion in Meru, Kenya, c. 1910-1950’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1998), pp. 121-145 JSTOR Luise White, ‘The Traffic in Heads: Bodies, Borders and the Articulation of Regional Histories’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, (Jun., 1997), pp. 325- 338 Ann Zulawski, ‘Hygiene and "The Indian Problem": Ethnicity and Medicine in Bolivia, 1910-1920’, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2000), pp. 107-129.
Week 2 Trade, disease, and international health As we saw last week, medicine certainly played an important role in the moral justification of imperial expansion. But economics was at the heart of imperialism – and medicine played an important role there as well. Today we will look at the ways in which ‘International health’ emerged from the nexus between these two strands of of imperial endeavour.
Seminar topic: ‘Weak States’, SARS and health for all In an ever more global world, and one in which disease outbreaks can spread from continent to continent in hours, rather than months and days, how have medical technologies influenced national policies and identities?
Required Reading: Read at least ONE EACH from groups A and B; compare and contrast historical and contemporary relationships between trade, disease and public health Group A Alexandra Minna Stern ‘Yellow Fever Crusade: US Colonialism, Tropical Medicine and the International Politics of Mosquito Control, 1900-1920’, in Alison Bashford, ed.,
18 Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006): Patrick Zylberman, ‘Civilising the State: Borders, Weak States, and International Health in Modern Europe’ in Alison Bashford, ed., Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006):
Group B Roberta Bivins, ‘“The people have no more love left for the Commonwealth”: Media, Migration and Identity in the 1961-2 British Smallpox Outbreak’, Immigrants and Minorities (forthcoming, Autumn 2008) Nicholas B. King, ‘Security, Disease, Commerce: Ideologies of Postcolonial Global Health’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 32, No. 5/6 (Oct. - Dec., 2002), pp. 763-789 Carolyn Strange, ‘Postcard from Plaguetown: SARS and the Exoticization of Toronto’, in Alison Bashford, ed., Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).
Background and Further Reading: Alison Bashford, ed., Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker (eds), Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 2001). J. R. Hurley, Hygiene and Sanitation: Exhibits Shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition’, Public Health Reports (1896-1970), Vol. 30, No. 19 (May 7, 1915), pp. 1377-1381
Week 3 Doctoring National Identity If empire has played a major role in shaping national self-image in colonizing nations, how much more fundamental has it been in forming the national myths and identity of former colonies? The importance of medicine in this process is demonstrated particularly clearly in the case of Australia, where nation-building was deeply marked by discourses on race. Today we will compare Australia with what we have already see of the role of medicine in the US and British empires. Why has medicine been so influential (if, indeed, medicine has had more than rhetorical force)?
Seminar topic: What role did medicine play in the creation (and demise) of ‘White Australia’? And why?
Required Reading:
Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
Background and Further Reading: Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Nancy Ordover, ‘National Hygiene: Twentieth Century Immigration and the Eugenics Lobby’, in Ordover, American Eugenics: Queer Anatomy and the Science of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) pp. 1-56.
Theme 4 Identity and identification: linking the self to the skin Week 4
19 Identifying the ‘Other’: imperial fingerprints This far, we have focused on how we know and define ourselves as individuals and citizens of a nation. But identity is also imposed on us by others – not just who we think we are, but who we are thought and assumed to be. This week we will begin to examine technologies of identification, and their relationship to imposed and assumed identities. Our first port of call will be India under the Raj… Seminar topic: The power is in the details Why did fingerprinting emerge from India? Why did colonial administrators, in particular, need to define individuals, and why did they choose a physical, embodied identifier as their preferred method of doing so? What does this choice reveal about their assumptions about Indians, India, and themselves?
Required Reading: Chandak Sengoopta, Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was born in colonial India, London Macmillan 2003 Chapters 2-3, 5-6.
Background and Further Reading: Film: The Return of Martin Guerre
Simon Cole, ‘What Counts for Identity? The Historical Origins of the methodology of Latent Fingerprint Identification Science in Context, 12 (1993):139-172. Radhika Singha, ‘Settle, mobilize, verify: Identification practices in colonial India’ Studies in History, NS 15 (2000):151-98 Henry Cotton, Indian and Home Memories (London: Unwin, 1911)
Week 5 Myths and measurements: anthropometry Fingerprinting was far from the only biometric system to be explored as a means of fixing identities to individuals. Anthropometry, in various forms, also emerged in the later 19th century. Although influenced by the exigencies of empire, anthropometry was more directly a response to population mobility and urbanization. Here we will explore the slightly different assumptions provoked by these origins, and embodied by anthropometric practices. What other purposes did anthropometry serve, and why was it superceded – at least until the post-9/11 period – by fingerprinting?
Seminar topic: NO SEMINAR
Required Reading: Simon Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprints and Criminal Identification (Cambridge: Harvard, 2001) Prologue and Chapters 3, 5, 6 Valentin Groebner, ‘Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Figures, and the Limits of Identification, 1400-1600’, in Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001): 15-27.
Background and Further Reading: Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001). Anne M. Joseph, ‘Anthropometry, the Police Expert, and the Deptford Murders: The Contested Introduction of Fingerprinting for the Identification of Criminals in Late
20 Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, in Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001): 164-183. Martine Kaluszynski, ‘Republican Identity: Bertillonage as Government Technique’, in Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001): 123-138. Troy Duster, ‘The Molecular Reinscription of Race: Unanticipated Issues in Biotechnology and Forensic Science’. Patterns of Prejudice 40 (2006.): 427-441
Week 6 Reading Week: NO MEETING
Week 7 Identity, privacy and technology: DNA fingerprints and CSI As the technologies of identification change, do their effects change Are DNA fingerprinting and CCTV really different from their historical antecedents? Why are our feelings about such new techniques so ambivalent? And do they really have the power and the specificity that we (and the popular media) attribute to them?
Seminar topic: Security, suspicion, and the consumption of identification What are the dangers of using DNA as a primary form of identification? What unintended consequences do we fear? Will our security – national or individual -- be increased by wider networks of surveillance, and larger databases of identification? And what happens when biometric identity and identification become commodities?
Required Reading: Jon Agar, ‘Modern Horrors: British Identity and Identity Cards’ in Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001). Simon Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprints and Criminal Identification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2001) Epilogue and Chapters 10, 12. Arthur Daemmrich, ‘The Evidence Does Not Speak for Itself: Expert Witnesses and the Organization of DNA-Typing Companies’, Social Studies of Science, Oct 1998; vol. 28: pp. 741-772.
Background and Further Reading: Jane Caplan and John Torpey (eds), Documenting Individual Identity The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: PUP, 2001). Simon A. Cole, ‘Witnessing Identification: Latent Fingerprinting Evidence and Expert Knowledge’, Social Studies of Science, Oct 1998; vol. 28: pp. 687-712 Peter Gill, Alec Jeffreys, David Werrett, ‘Forensic Application of DNA ‘Fingerprints’’ Nature, Vol 318, Dec. 1985: 577-579 Phillip Kerr, A Philosophical Investigation, (New York: Farrar Straus &Giroux, 1992) Michael Lynch, Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Contested Identities: Science, Law and Forensic Practice’, Social Studies of Science, Oct 1998; vol. 28: pp. 675-686. Dorothy Nelkin, M. Susan Lindee, “Chapter 8, Genetic Essentialism Applied”, in their The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W.H.Freeman and Co, 1995)
21 Pamela Sankar, ‘The proliferation and risks of government DNA databases’, American Journal of Public Health March 1997, Vol. 87, No. 3 Martin Weiner, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in England, 1830- 1914 (CUP. 1990).
Theme 5 Bodies and the body politic: life, death and organ transplantation Week 8 Tissues and treatments: organ transplantation Only relatively recently have we been able to transplant organs from one human body to another successfully. By contrast, for millennia we have imbued organs like the heart with great cultural significance – significance which is bound up with our assumptions about the embodied nature of personality and individuality. Thus it is perhaps unsurprising that our responses to organ transplantation and other medical uses of human tissue are often ambiguous. This week we will look at the interplay between history, nationhood, and responses to organ transplantation.
Seminar topic: ‘Medicine gone mad’: Nazis, Nuremburg, and national identity Have German responses to the revelations of Nuremberg and the post-war era created a distinctive ‘German medicine’, or merely reinforced differences that were already embedded in German culture? Why is it shocking that medicine and medical professionals participated fully in the Holocaust, turning some bodies into commodities? And to what extent are suspicions of organ transplantation specific to Germany?
Required Reading: Linda Hogle Recovering the Nation’s Body: Cultural Memory Medicine and the Politics of Redemption (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1999), Section 1 ‘German Culture, History and the Boundaries of the Body’.
Background and Further Reading:
Film: Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Nazi Medicine: in the Shadow of the Reich Gerhard Baader, Susan E. Lederer, Morris Low, Florian Schmaltz and Alexander V. Schwerin, ‘Pathways to Human Experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States’, Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 20, (2005), pp. 205-231 JSTOR Susan E. Lederer, Subjected to science: human experimentation in America before the Second World War. Gordon R. Mitchell, Kelly Happe, ‘Informed Consent After the Human Genome Project’, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 2001, pp. 375-406 David Rosner, ‘Human Guinea Pigs: Medical Experimentation Before World War II’, Reviews in American History, Vol. 24, No. 4, December 1996, pp. 652-656. Project Muse Jon Turney, Frankenstein’s Footsteps: Science, genetics and popular culture (London: Yale University Press, 1998), ‘Chapter 4: Creating Life in the laboratory’. Paul Weindling The 'Sonderweg' of German Eugenics: Nationalism and Scientific Internationalism, The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 22, No. 3, (1989), pp. 321-333 Urban Wiesing, ‘Genetics in Germany: History and Hysteria’, in Ruth Chadwick, Darren Shickle, et al (eds), The Ethics of Genetic Screening (London: Kluwer, 1999): pp. 147- 156.
Week 9 Organs and ownership
22 As human tissues become ever more medically useful, and ever more commercially profitable, debate has intensified over who should benefit from our bodies, and how. We will look at the rapid expansion of tissue-based treatments and technologies, take a historical perspective on the different moral and ethical issues they raise.
Seminar topic: Do we own our selves? If not, why not? And who does?
Required Reading: Donna Dickenson, Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008) Chapters 1,2,5,8
Background and Further Reading: B. Bunzel, B. Schmidl-Mohl, A. Grundböck and G. Wollenek, ‘Does Changing the Heart Mean Changing Personality? A Retrospective Inquiry on 47 Heart Transplant Patients’, Quality of Life Research, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Aug., 1992), pp. 251-256. Renee C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey, ‘Chronicle of a Cadaver Transplant’, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 3, No. 6 (Dec., 1973), pp. 1-3. Charles W. Lidz, Alan Meisel, Loren H. Roth, Arthur Caplan, David Zimmerman and C. L. ‘Mrs. X and the Bone Marrow Transplant’, IRB: Ethics and Human Research, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1983), pp. 6-8. Alexandria Niewijk, ‘Tough Priorities: Organ Triage and the Legacy of Apartheid’, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 29, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1999), pp. 42-50. Jeffrey M. Prottas, ‘Competition for Altruism: Bone and Organ Procurement in the United States’, The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2 (1992), pp. 299-317 Jeffrey M. Prottas, Olga Jonasson and John I. Kleinig ‘Case Studies: In Organ Transplants, Americans First?’ The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 16, No. 5 (Oct., 1986), pp. 23-25. Margaret S. Swain and Randy W. Marusyk ‘An Alternative to Property Rights in Human Tissue’, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 20, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1990), pp. 12-15.
Week 10 Brain-dead: medical morality in the non-western world How do we recognize the dead? What constitutes the absence of life? In the west, and in part because of the new tissue-based treatments, we have defined ‘death’ as the absence of cognition. But this choice is culturally contingent. This week we will look at the ‘brain death’ debates, comparing the West with Japan.
Seminar topic: Culture and the social self Why and how is ‘identity’ social? What do cultural differences in identity mean for medicine and medical technologies?
Required Reading: Margaret Lock, ‘Deadly Disputes: Hybrid Selves and the Calculation of Death in Japan and North America’, Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 13, (1998), pp. 410-429. JSTOR E. Ohnuki-Tierney, “The Reduction of Personhood to Brain and Rationality: Japanese contestation of medical high technology.” in Andrews and Cunningham, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1997) 212-240. SHORT LOAN
Background and Further Reading:
23 George J. Annas, ‘At Law: Brain Death and Organ Donation: You Can Have One without the Other’, The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jun. - Jul., 1988), pp. 28-30 RD Guttmann, ‘Technology, clinical studies, and control in the field of organ transplantation’ Journal of the History of Biology 30:3 (1997): 367-79 Ilana Lowy, ‘Tissue groups and cadaver kidney sharing: socio-cultural aspects of a medical controversy’, International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 2, (1986): 195-218.
Summer Term
Medicine and Technology in the ‘New World Order’
Week 1 ‘Sicko’ This film explores – in a highly polemical way – the US healthcare system. We will use is as a case study of the relationship between national cultures, national identity, and medicine. See your viewing guide for discussion points and questions. Required Reading: NONE
Theme 6 Genomics, communities and national identities Week 2 Big medicine? History and the Human Genome Project What is the Human Genome Project, and where did it come from? Was it really medicine’s ‘Space Race’? Why has it so gripped the public imagination, and national science agendas? Here we will look at the origins and outcomes of the HGP, and assess its impact on medicine, medical research, and popular understandings of health, self, and the body.
Seminar topic: Is genetics the new history? Here we will explore yet another new commodification of identity, this one dependent on genomics: the sale of genetic information as a form of genealogy, or family history. Why is the idea of a family history embedded in our bodies so appealing? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the genome as a historical source?
Required Reading: Roberta Bivins, ‘Hybrid Vigour? Genes, Genomics, and History’, Genomics, Society and Policy 14 (2008) 1: 12-22. Dan Kevles, Out of Eugenics: The Historical Politics of the Human Genome” in Kevles and Hood (eds), The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992): 3- 36. Jose Van Dijck, ‘Biophoria: The Human Genome Project’ in Van Dijck, Imagenation: Popular Images of Genetics, (Macmillan Press, 1998): 119-145.
Background and Further Reading: Film: Gattaca Dan Brock, ‘The Human Genome Project and Human Identity’ in Weir, Lawrence and Fales (eds) Genes and Human Self-Knowledge: historical and philosophical reflections on modern genetics. (U of Iowa Press, 1994)
24 Angus Clarke and Flo Ticehurst (eds), Living with the Genome: Ethical and Social Aspects of Human Genetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). Anne Kerr, Sarah Cunningham-Burley and Amanda Amos ‘Eugenics and the New Genetics in Britain: Examining Contemporary Professionals' Accounts’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 175-198. Fatimah Jackson, ‘The Human Genome Project and the African American Community; Race, Diversity, and American Science’, in Raymon Zilinskas and Peter Balin (eds), The Human Genome Project and Minority Communities: Ethical, Social and Political Dilemmas (London: Praeger Press, 2001): 35-52. Dan Kevles and Leroy Hood, “Reflections” in Kevles and Hood (eds), The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992): 300-328. N.L. Krementsov, ‘In the shadow of the Bomb: US-Soviet Biomedical relations, 1944- 1948’, Journal of Cold War Studies Vol 9 No. 4 2007, 41-67 Isaac Rabino ‘Genetic Testing and Its Implications: Human Genetics Researchers Grapple with Ethical Issues’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 2003), pp. 365-402 Gisli Palsson and Paul Rabinow, ‘Iceland: The Case of a National Human Genome Project’, Anthropology Today, Vol. 15, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 14-18.
Week 3 Contentious communities: the Human Genetic Diversity Project Genomics, like statistics, offers information about groups, rather than individuals, majority rather than minority populations. With hopes high that the HGP would catalyze a medical ‘great leap forward’, some scientists were concerned that minority populations – and their distinctive DNA -- would be left behind. Others worried that, as small ethnic populations were increasing absorbed by their neighbors, the evolutionary history of humankind (encoded in their genomes) would be lost. They proposed the Human Genetic Diversity Project as a complement to and extension of the HGP. Looking at the project’s goals, organisers, participants and alternatives, we will explore why the HGDP failed to recruit support from its target populations, and why it has proven so controversial. Seminar topic: Re-coding or de-coding history? The HGDP was in part biology’s attempt to save what they saw as historical evidence. From a historian’s perspective, what were the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? Where does it fit into rich history of medical and biological attempts to create and control human identities?
Required Reading: Jenny Reardon, ‘The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 357-388 Jenny Reardon, Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), ‘Chapter 3 In the Legacy of Darwin’; ‘Chapter 6: Discourses of Participation’. AND ONE of the websites below http://www.hgalert.org/topics/personalInfo/hgdp.htm http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/hgdp/hgdp1.html http://www.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/hgdp.html
Background and Further Reading: Gordon R. Mitchell, Kelly Happe, ‘Informed Consent After the Human Genome Project’, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 2001, pp. 375-406 Fatimah Jackson, ‘The Human Genome Project and the African American Community; Race, Diversity, and American Science’, in Raymon Zilinskas and Peter Balin (eds),
25 The Human Genome Project and Minority Communities: Ethical, Social and Political Dilemmas (London: Praeger Press, 2001): 35-52 Jenny Reardon, Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)
Week 4 Conclusions NO SEMINAR (optional revision session) NO REQUIRED READING
Media Journal Guidelines All students are required to maintain a media journal for the duration of the module. Students must compile at least one entry each for five course themes, and will present one entry over the course of the year.
Journals will be collected for feedback in Term 1 Week 8; Term 2 Week 5; and Term 3, Week 3.
A sign-up sheet for presentation slots will be circulated in Week 2.
Entries: Each entry will consist of an item from either news or non-news media sources, and your analysis (500 words) of that source. At least two of your five entries must address non-news items, and at least two must address news items.
The news items: Where your news story is drawn from a printed source, you must include a copy of that article with your journal for that week. IF your news item comes from TV or radio, you must describe the story AND HOW IT WAS PRESENTED (e.g. was it live reportage of a current event?; a ‘talking heads’ debate?; an editorial/commentary?; or a ‘human interest’/vox populi story?) in detail, and include the times, date and channel of the broadcast. You may submit a cd/dvd/podcast of the story if you prefer. If you find your news story on-line, you must include a full website address (and if possible a printout) and the date on which you accessed that story. NOTE THAT ON-LINE NEWS ITEMS MUST COME FROM RELIABLE MEDIA SOURCES, SUCH AS CNN, BBC, MSNBC, or ON-LINE NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL NEWPAPERS ETC.
Your analysis of each news story should include the following: An explanation of how your article relates to the module theme, AND TO SPECIFC READINGS, where appropriate; Speculation on why the story appeared – how it ‘made the cut’; Assessment of the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the story; Assessment of the political agendas represented by the article; Conclusions about what your news item reveals about the relationship between technology, medicine, and identity. Your analysis may also include your own opinions, experiences, and point of view on the news covered. It should not exceed 500 words.
The ‘non-news’ items: Here you have a great deal of freedom to choose your source. It need not be ‘current’ or even contemporary. Potential sources could be as mundane as an ad for cough medicine, or as unusual as a specific work of art or favourite song. You can use blogs, You Tube, or TV shows like the CSI franchise. Films, of course, are also good options. Wherever possible, you should include a copy of your source in your media journal. Where that is impossible, you MUST describe it fully and
26 recognizably. For example, give relevant lyrics for songs, and tell me what genre of music it is, as well as listing the artist’s name, album and track title, etc. For a TV ad, describe both what the ad says, and how it looks – setting, actors/spokespeople, live-action or animated, etc. as well as telling me what product was being advertised and where you saw the ad. You may submit electronic copies of such material if you prefer. You must include complete links (and dates accessed) for all internet based material.
Your analysis of each item should include the following: An explanation of how your item relates to issues raised in the course AND TO SPECIFC READINGS, where appropriate; Assessment of the political agendas or perspectives on science/technology/identity represented by the item; Conclusions about what your item reveals about the relationship between technology, science and identity. Your analysis may also include your own opinions, experiences, and point of view on the representation covered. It should not exceed 500 words.
Useful Links: To find links to newspapers from around the globe, see: http://www.world-newspapers.com/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldnewsguide
To find films on relevant topics, see: http://www.movierevie.ws/ http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD023539.html
I will continue to add to these links on our module website. Below, I offer a few suggestions on possible entries, to help you get started.
‘ Medicine, science, and the family’ suggestions Find an article on the new reproductive technologies in a NON-UK newspaper (the Straits Times, the Asai Shinbu, the New York Times, USAToday, the Nigerian Guardian, Mexico’s The News etc. Assess whether that article presents them in the same light as our readings and classroom discussions, or if it illustrates significant differences. Assess why the similarities or differences might be present, looking particularly at ideas of ‘family’ and ‘kinship’.
Explore different models of motherhood and birth depicted by Batchelor Mother, Junior, The Midwife’s Tal, or Blade Runner. Set these films into historical context and discuss their significance in relation to NRTs.
Organ/Tissue Transplant suggestions: Find an article on organ-transplantation in a NON-UK newspaper (the Straits Times, the Asai Shinbu, the New York Times, USAToday, the Nigerian Guardian, Mexico’s The News etc. Assess whether that article presents organ transplants in the same light as our readings and classroom discussions, or if it illustrates significant differences. Assess why the similarities or differences might be present.
Use a film (e.g. JohnQ, Return to Me, Blink, The Island, Dirty Pretty Things, Coma, Repo! The Genetic Opera) as your non-news media item. Explore views of body ownership based on that video, and draw an informed conclusion as to the ethics of organ sales.
Biotechnologies of surveillance suggestions Find one news article describing the use of technology for surveillance. What traits does the technology identify or depend on to function? What is the goal of the technology and who does it benefit? Who is likely to be the target of this technology?
27 Compare your news article with either one non-news description of the same technology (anything from an ad for the technology to a movie or TV depiction of it) or with the emergence of biometrics in Simon Cole Chapter 2 or 6.
Find a news story related to the use of DNA evidence in criminology, policing or the courtroom. What are the advantages and drawbacks to the identities and databases thus created?
Using a source from TV (e.g. CSI, any of the various courtroom dramas, even X-files or Roswell, if you wish), assess media representations of DNA evidence. Do you think these representations are accurate?
28 Mark scale All undergraduate modules are marked using one overall system, which runs from 0- 100. Marks fall into different classes of performance: 70-100 First Class 60-69 Second Class, Upper Division (also referred to as "Upper Second" or "2.1") 50-59 Second Class, Lower Division (also referred to as "Lower Second" or "2.2") 40-49 Third Class 0-39 Fail The department or lecturer running any particular module will be able to tell you what specific marking criteria apply in the department or on the module.
With effect from first-year students in 2008-09 the University is making some changes to how we use this overall scale. The standard required to achieve a given class on any piece of work remains the same as before, so the borderlines separating classes lie at the same standard. The following sections apply only to first-year undergraduate students 2008-09; these students will have their work marked as set out here throughout their courses.
More information is available from the Teaching Quality website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/quality/categories/examinations/markscalesconventi ons/forstudents/
Within the overall system set out above, your assessed work and exams will be marked on one of two scales, depending on certain characteristics of the assessment or exam. The department or lecturer running any particular module will be able to tell you which scale applies to the module. Students who begin their course of study in autumn 2008 will be assessed on all History essays and examinations on the 17-point marking scale described below, part 2. (The marking scale for students in their second or subsequent year of study remains unchanged from 2007-08):
1) Numerically based work, work with smaller questions (all points on 0-100 scale) Where an assessment or exam is based on numerical work, or where there are a large number of questions in an exam with small numbers of marks for each question, we can use all of the points from 0 to 100. This is typical of many assessments and exams in Science, some language work, some exams in Economics and the Business School and so on. You can find examples on the Teaching Quality website at www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/quality/categories/examinations/markscalesconventions/fo rstudents/ug08/markscale/examplepapers/
2) Other work (17-point marking scale) Where an assessment or exam is a single piece of work, or a small number of long exam answers, work is marked using the following scale. This is typical for essay-based subjects, dissertations and many pieces of work where there is no right answer and the quality of your analysis and argument is particularly important. You can find examples on the Teaching Quality website at www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/quality/categories/examinations/markscalesconventions/fo rstudents/ug08/markscale/examplepapers/
29 The descriptors in this table are interpreted as appropriate to the subject and the year/level of study, and implicitly cover good academic practice and the avoidance of plagiarism. Faculties and departments publish more detailed marking criteria.
With the exception of Excellent 1st, High Fail and Zero, the descriptors cover a range of marks, with the location within each group dependent on the extent to which the elements in the descriptor and departmental/faculty marking criteria are met. Class scale descriptor Exceptional work of the highest quality, demonstrating excellent knowledge and understanding, analysis, organisation, accuracy, Excellent 1st relevance, presentation and appropriate skills. At final-year level: work may achieve or be close to publishable standard. First High 1st Very high quality work demonstrating excellent knowledge and Mid 1st understanding, analysis, organisation, accuracy, relevance, presentation and appropriate skills. Work which may extend Low 1st existing debates or interpretations. Upper High 2.1 High quality work demonstrating good knowledge and Second Mid 2.1 understanding, analysis, organisation, accuracy, relevance, (2.1) Low 2.1 presentation and appropriate skills. High 2.2 Competent work, demonstrating reasonable knowledge and Lower Mid 2.2 understanding, some analysis, organisation, accuracy, relevance, Second Low 2.2 presentation and appropriate skills. High 3rd Work of limited quality, demonstrating some relevant knowledge Third Mid 3rd and understanding. Low 3rd High Fail Work does not meet standards required for the appropriate stage (sub of an Honours degree. There may be evidence of some basic Fail Honours) understanding of relevant concepts and techniques Fail Poor quality work well below the standards required for the Low Fail appropriate stage of an Honours degree. Work of no merit OR Absent, work not submitted, penalty in some Zero Zero misconduct cases
For calculating module results, the points on this marking scale have the following numerical equivalents: Point on numerical range of marks for work marked using all Class scale equivalent points on 0-100 scale Excellent 1st 96 93-100 High 1st 89 85-92 First Mid 1st 81 78-84 Low 1st 74 70-77 Upper High 2.1 68 67-69 Second Mid 2.1 65 64-66
30 Low 2.1 62 60-63 High 2.2 58 57-59 Lower Mid 2.2 55 54-56 Second Low 2.2 52 50-53 High 3rd 48 47-49 Third Mid 3rd 45 44-46 Low 3rd 42 40-43 High Fail 38 35-39 Fail Fail 25 19-34 Low Fail 12 1-18 Zero Zero 0 0 You can see that marks for all work, whether marked using every point on the 0-100 scale (numerically based work and similar) or on the 17-point scale (essays, dissertations etc), fall into the same categories. A piece of work given a mark of 81 has reached the standard for "Mid 1st" whether it is a Mathematics exam or a History essay, an oral language exam or a design project in Engineering.
31