• Additional information

• MMCCS website https://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/ department_ of_media_music_communication_and_cultural_studies/

• MMCCS Session Re-mark Application http://www.mq.edu.au/pubstatic/public/download/?id=167914 Information is correct at the time of publication

 

University standards on assessment

More information about university standards on assessment can be found at:

https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/assessment

 

Practices on late submission

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, (a) a penalty for lateness will apply – two (2) marks out of 100 will be deducted per day for assignments submitted after the due date – and (b) no assignment will be accepted more than seven (7) days (incl. weekends) after the original submission deadline. No late submissions will be accepted for timed assessments – e.g. quizzes, online tests.

This unit will use iLearn for submission of assignments, including reflections.  However, attendance at lectures and tutorials is highly valued.  Educational research has repeatedly demonstrated that attendance at class correlates closely with grades. Lectures in this unit are interactive - we will be discussing ideas, analysing materials and brainstorming in the lecture and these kinds of class discussions in lectures are poorly recorded on iLecture, making face-to-face attendance highly valuable for students.  I also really enjoy the opportunity to hear your ideas and experiences so please do attend!

Reading the set texts for the week is essential for completion of the unit.  Reflective summaries of key readings must be submitted on-line BEFORE that week's lecture and tutorials.  These summaries are not expected to be written beautifully or show an in depth understanding of the reading - they just need to be completed in a timely way on the appropriate two readings.  The main purpose of the summaries is to prepare you for discussions in tutorials - if you don't understand everything in the reading when you write the summary that's fine!

The final reflection, due in Week 13, will require you to describe three moments across the course of the semester where your understanding of a reading changed after participating in a lecture or a tutorial.  Your summaries will be a great resource for this reflection, but obviously to reflect on your experiences in class you need to come along!

The readings for the unit will be available in electronic format in the library.  The link to Leganto in ilearn will take you directly to the readings.  Please let me know if there are any problems with availability.

Suggestions for further readings are offered for most weeks, to enable deeper reading on the topic for those who are passionately interested, or are writing an essay or putting together an autobiographical reflection on that theme.  These are just the starting point for your further reading.

PLEASE do use the library as a resource for your essays as well as for the weekly readings.  Millions are spent purchasing subscriptions to the academic journals and databases held there - they cover much more territory than Google Scholar or other publicly available databases.  If you struggle to find appropriate material, please get in contact with Nicole or speak to the staff at the library.

CUL3022 Inventing normality

 

Block 1: Creating “normal”

 

Week 1 Introduction to the unit

• * Urla, Jacqueline and Terry, Jennifer (1995) "Introduction: Mapping Embodied Deviance" (exerpts) from Deviant Bodies, Indiana University Press

 

Note that there WILL be a tutorial in Week 1

 

Week 2  Biopower and perfect babies

• Perron, A., Fluet, C.. Holmes, D. (2004) “Agents of care and agents of the state: bio-power and nursing practice” Journal of Advanced Nursing, 50(5), pp.536-44
• * Gareth M. Thomas & Deborah Lupton (2016) Threats and thrills: pregnancy apps, risk and consumption, Health, Risk & Society, 17:7-8, 495-509,

Extension reading

• Landsman, Gail (2009) “Chapter Two: Doing everything right: choice, control and mother blame” pp.15-49 from Reconstructing motherhood and disability in the age of “perfect babies”, London, Routledge
• Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. (2006) “Biopower now” from Biosocieties 1, 195-217

 

Weekly reading summaries begin this week

 

Week 3 Ab/normalcy

• Davis, Lennard (1995) Excerpt from “Constructing Normalcy”, in Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, New York: Verso pp.23-40
• Dreger, A. (1998) “The limits of individuality: ritual and sacrifice in the lives and medical treatment of conjoined twins” Studies in the history and philosophy of biology and biomedical science 29(1) 1-29

Extension reading

• Sharpe, Andrew (2007) “Structured Like a Monster: Understanding Human Difference Through a Legal Category”, Law and Critique 18:2
• Samuels, Ellen (2011) examining Christine and Millie McKoy: Where Enslavement and Enfreakment Meet, Signs 37(1), pp.53-81

 

Week 4: (Inter)sexed bodies

• Preves, Sharon (2002) “Sexing the Intersexed: An Analysis of Sociocultural Responses to Intersexuality”, Signs, 27:2, pp.523-56.
• Dreger, Alice Domurat (2000) “Jarring Bodies: thoughts on the Display of Unusual Anatomies”, Perspective in Biology and Medicine, 43:2, pp.161-72.

Further reading

• Ammatura, Francesca (2016) “Intersexuality and the ‘Right to Bodily Integrity’: Critical Reflections on Female Genital Cutting, Circumcision, and Intersex ‘Normalizing Surgeries’ in Europe, Social and Legal Studies 25(5) 591-610

 

Week 5: dis/ability

• Jarman, Michelle (2005) “Resisting good imperialism: reading disability as radical vulnerability” Atenea 25(1): 107–16
• Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie (2011) “Misfits: a feminist materialist disability concept” Hypatia vol. 26, no. 3

Further reading

• Finger, Anne (2005) “Writing disabled lives: beyond the singular” PMLA Conference on Disability Studies and the University 610-615
• Goodley, Dan (2011) “Introduction: global disability studies” from Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, Sage, pp.1-21
• Siebers, Tobin 2008 “Body Theory” in Disability Theory 53-69
• Longmore, Paul. (1997) ‘Conspicuous Contribution and American Cultural Dilemma: Telethon Rituals of Cleansing and Renewal’ The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability (eds) David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (eds) Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 134-158

 

Week 6: from eugenics to genetics

• Snyder, S. L. & D. Mitchell (2002) “Out of the Ashes of Eugenics: Diagnostic Regimes in the United States and the Making of a Disability Minority”, Patterns of Prejudice, 36:1.
• Rose, Nikolas (2010) “Normality and pathology in a biomedical age” Sociological Review, October 2009, Vol.57(2_suppl), pp.66-83

Further reading

• Garland-Thomson, R. (2012) “The Case for Conserving Disability” Bioethical Inquiry (2012) 9:339–355 
• Novas, Carlos and Rose, N. (2000) “Genetic Risk and the Birth of the Somatic Individual”, Economy and Society, 29:4.
• Eve Kittay (2009) “The personal is philosophical is political: a philosopher and mother of a cognitively disabled person sends notes from the battlefield” from Metaphilosophy, 40(3-4) 606-627
• Hansen, Nancy, Janz, Heidi, Sobsey, Dick (2008) “21^st century eugenics?” The Lancet

 

Essay plan due this week

 

Week 7: No lecture, tutorials or readings. 

Instead there will be one to one consultations on essays.  Timetable of meetings to be circulated in Week 5 and 6. Not all meetings will take place in normal class time.

 

MID SEMESTER BREAK

 

Block 2: “Normal” lives

 

Week 8  Working bodies

• Thompson, E.P. (1967) “Work Discipline and Industrial capitalism”  Past and Present 38 pp.56-97
• Dyer, S., McDowell, Banitzky, A. (2008) “Emotional labour/body work: the caring labours of migrants in the UK’s National Health Service” from Geoforum 39, 2030-2038

Further reading

• Collinson, David and Collinson, Margaret (1997) “’De layering managers’: time-space surveillance and its gendered effects’ Organization August 1997 vol. 4 no. 3 375-407
• Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder (2016) “Disability as multitude: reworking non-productive labor power” pp.204-222 from The Biopolitics of Disability, University of Michigan

 

Case study essay due this week

 

Week 9  Active and debilitated bodies

• Crook, Tim (2008) “Norms, Forms and Beds: Spatializing Sleep in Victorian Britain”, Body & Society, 14:4, pp.15-35.
• Burke, Lucy and Crow, Liz (2016) “Chapter Five: Bedding Out: art, activism and Twitter” Katie Ellis, Mike Kent (eds) Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives, Taylor and Francis  

Further reading

• Shildrick, Margrit (2015) “Living on; not getting better” feminist review 111 2015
• Puar, Jasbir (2017) “The Right to Maim, ix - xxiv

 

Week 10  Ageing bodies

• Lanoix (2006) “No Room for abuse” Cultural Studies Vol. 19, No. 6 November 2005, pp. 719􏰀/736
• Crisp, J. (1995) “Making sense of the stories that people with Alzheimer’s tell: a journey with my mother” Nursing Inquiry 133-140

Further reading

• Crichton, J. (2007) “Living with dementia: curating self identity” Dementia, 2007,  Vol.6(3), pp.365-381
• Morten Hillgaard Bulow and Marie-Louise Holm (2016) “Queering ‘Successful Ageing’, Dementia and Alzheimer’s Research” Body and Society 22(3)

 

Week 11  Biomediation: bodies, technologies and normalcies

• Belser, Julia Watts (2016) “
• Hagood, Mack (2017) “Disability and biomediation: tinnitus as phantom disability” from Ellcessor, E and Kirkpatrick, B. (eds) Disability Media Studies, New York University Press

 

Week 12 Life on us: waste and the limits of the body  

• Haraway, Donna (2011) “Awash in Urine: ” from Women’s Studies Quarterly 40(1&2)

 

Reflective media presentation due this week

 

Week 13 No teaching

 

Final reflection on reading due this week