Read: Martin, The Woman in the Body
Everybody will read chapters 1, 2, 5, 11, and 12.
In addition:
Menstruation group will read chapters 3, 6, and 7.
Birth group will read chapters 4, 8, and 9.
Menopause group will read chapters 3 and 10.

1. Martin's book focuses on medical and individual representations of women's bodies, particularly the processes of menstruation, childbirth, and menopause. For the particular process you have been assigned, what metaphors and assumptions are involved? How do women's depictions of these processes compare to the examples from medical textbooks?

2. What are Martin's broader claims about medicine as a system of power/knowledge? Are you persuaded by her arguments?

3. How does Martin's sense of power and knowledge compare to Foucault's? With what significance?

4. How, according to Martin, do conceptions of bodies vary according to women's class and race identities? Do you find her argument persuasive?

5. Foucault asserts that resistance can only occur within the terms of power, for it is within those terms that the possibilities for resistance arise. How might Martin respond to that claim?

Journal entry: Body Worlds, Displayed and Experienced (due in class on Monday, 10/16)

Emily Martin argues that women experience their bodies in ways that differ from the descriptions in medical textbooks, but which also reflect their class and race identitites. This week, we will be touring the exhibit Body Worlds 2 at the Museum of Science in Boston. Emily Martin's book prompts us to consider two questions about this exhibit. First, how is scientific description of the body caught up in cultural metaphors and assumptions? Second, how does the display of the body as an anatomical system analyzed scientifically differ from the way we as individuals experience our bodies? With what significance or consequences? This assignment asks you to consider one of these questions through either analyzing the exhibit itself (displays, captions) and the materials associated with it (website, pamphlets) or interviewing someone who attended the exhibit to find out how he or she responded to the display. A questionnaire will be distributed during the trip to help you in analyzing the exhibit and/or conducting an interview. How do your findings compare to Martin's? With what significance?

For more information, contact: aleshkow@holycross.edu