announcements

• Primary research emails – due today
• Attendance reminder: if you’re not sure that you’ll be absent, email me anyway by 11am.
• Reminder about device-free time

AGENDA

• Device time
  • News item
  • Primary research check-in
    • Note my tips. I’ll add notes for your tech topics as I encounter them in my research for Beloved. I am prioritizing tech topics more directly relevant to the novel.
    • If your emails go unanswered, what’s your backup plan?
• Device-free time
  • Timed exercise
  • Discussion circle with audio excerpt
  • Final notes on recent reading/watching/listening

ASSIGNMENT

You can use AI, but you must verify any information you find.

1. NEWS: Please share and be prepared to explain a relevant news item.
2. READ and be prepared to discuss:
   • Beloved up until “Let’s see you walk on em.”
     (The entirety of Beloved-Part03.mp3)
   • Short readings on the formalization of medical gynecology during the 1800s. Note: some of their terminology is no longer in keeping with MLA and APA guidelines on inclusive language.
     • The first few paragraphs of Medical Apartheid’s Introduction, until “…one benign, one malevolent — of American medical research.”
     • Please also have a look at the painting described in Medical Apartheid’s Introduction.
     • The first 2.5 pages of Medical Bondage’s Introduction, until “history evidences how race, class, and gender influenced seemingly value-neutral fields like medicine.”
3. EMAIL due now:
   • If you haven’t sent me your draft email messages for primary research, do this ASAP!!
   • If I’ve responded to your draft messages with approval, please send your emails in accordance with the General Notes for D&T Email Drafts.
4. FOR DISCUSSION FACILITATORS: If you’re leading the next session discussion, email me the following by 1:30pm before class, as part of your discussion grade:
   • your audio excerpt
   • a simple discussion question on the Beloved reading assignment
   • a more challenging discussion question on the same assignment
5. REVIEW and be prepared to discuss:
   • Any/all previous assignments

Optional Reading

On the rise of formalized gynecology and obstetrics in the 1800s. Some of their terminology, particularly related to enslavement, is no longer in keeping with MLA and APA guidelines on inclusive language.

1. Medical Apartheid, Chapter 2: on antebellum medical experimentation on enslaved people. There’s also a chapter on comparative medical apartheids across the globe. The entire book is also available on audio, see the “Bodily Autonomy” section of the class reading/watching/listening page.
2. All of Medical bondage : race, gender, and the origins of American gynecology (2017) by Deirdre Cooper Owens. I also have an audio version of this book; let me know if you’re interested.
3. A review in the journal Science of the recent book Saying Anarcha.
4. Another well-known instance of medical apartheid in the United States: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot 2010). Also made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey.