As we start class today, take five minutes and tell the rest of us what book you found in the library over the weekend. What’s the title and who’s the author? Who published this book? Do you think it’s a scholarly source, or is it from a more popular press? Why did you check this book out?
Also, give us a quick update on what you think you’ll write your first paper about. What do you think your primary text will be? If you haven’t found one yet, what texts are you thinking about writing about? Or, what illness or issue are you interested in pursuing for this assignment?
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Over the weekend, I picked up Jeff Talarigo’s novel, The Pearl Diver, published by Doubleday. It is the story of a 19 year old Japanese girl that is diagnosed with leprosy. I was excited by the prospect of this book because it discusses the ideas surrounding a disease that is not talked about often. I was hesitant to delve into a disease like cancer because so many people know so much about it already. Leprosy is a very interesting illness that has a lot of myths around it and yet is not at the forefront of most people’s minds.
ReplyDeleteThis would definitely fall under the category of a more popular source, because it is a novel and not an article in a medical journal or something similar. Therefore, I think this will be the primary text that I analyze for this essay.
The book I checked out from the library is Ethics & AIDS in Africa: The Challenge to Our Thinking which is edited by Anton A. Van Niekerk and Loretta M. Kopelman. It was published by Left Coast Press, Inc. It was first published in South Africa by New Africa Books. I'm not sure if this is a scholarly source but I would think it is more of a popular press. I checked this book out because it gives facts and figures about the AIDS epidemic in Africa as well as discusses the social implications it has.
ReplyDeleteFor my paper, I am thinking of writing about either social stigmas about AIDS in the United States versus those in Africa or public policy/prevention methods discussed regarding AIDS in the United States versus Africa. I have not completely narrowed it down yet and I'm afraid that my topic might be too broad. I am not sure what my primary source would be and I'm not entirely sure what texts I'm thinking about writing about. My primary sources would most likely be government documents regarding rules and regulations enforced that deal with AIDS.
The book I found in the library is a book I aim to use to support my topic and provide me with more specific information on disease and strategies to combat disease. The title is Combating Aids: Communication Strategies in Action by Arvind Singhal and it is published by Sage Publications. It is more of a scholarly source, however, it is not peer reviewed.
ReplyDeleteRight now I am not exactly sure what my topic is going to be for sure. I am interested in somehow tying in music or sports, two things that interest me. I began looking into the possible topic of Freddy Mercury, the lead singer of the Band Queen whose death from AIDS helped bring the disease to the attention of many people. The problem I ran into this was that I could not find a primary text dealing with him. I'm going to keep on looking in the next few days to see if I can find anything. If that doesn't work out then I'm thinking about using Brian Piccolo: A Short Season by Jeanne Morris as my primary text and researching his strategies of combating Cancer.
Brian Piccolo was a football player who became diagnosed with Cancer and lived life to its fullest even when he was in immense pain.
The book I am checking out of the library is "The white death : a history of tuberculosis" by Thomas Dormandy. It was published by New York : New York University Press in 2000. I chose this book because I thought it would give a good background and ideas about tuberculosis to include in my paper. It is not a scholarly source, because it is not written for a medical or scientific audience, it is written more for the common society.
ReplyDeleteI plan on writing my paper about the romanticism of tuberculosis in the 19th century. My primary source is going to be "Moulin Rouge" and I will be using much of the information from Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor" essay we read for last week's class. I'm interested in revealing the reasoning behind why tuberculosis was considered romantic when it was an epidemic, and how this affected societal boundaries at that time.
I still am in the very beginnings of the thought process for this assignment, and could do well with more guidance towards a specific topic to elaborate on, and how exactly to tie together/compare my primary source with my secondary sources.
The title of my book is "The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture." It was written by James T. Patterson. I'm fairly certain that it is a scholarly source, seeing as it was published by Harvard. However, I can see the slight possibility of a problem arising because the book was published in 1987, which could mean that some of the information in it is dated.
ReplyDeleteI think that I'm going to write the first paper on the movie "Life as a House" which focuses on cancer and the impact it has on an already troubled family. I'm hoping to focus on whether or not the movie is effective in its attempts to persuade the audience to feel certain emotions. I'm also considering analyzing how the movie portrays cancer and if it has similarities, or differences, to the thoughts that Sontag and Patterson present.
The title of the book I found in the library is "HIV/AIDS and the Public Workplace." The book was written by James D. Slack and was published in 1998 by the University of Alabama Press. I feel the book is scholarly source because it appears to be a first hand account and seeing it was a book for "Local Government Preparedness" it was probably verified for authenticity. I choose this book because I though the title and the subject were interesting.
ReplyDeleteI'm not completely sure what the subject of my paper is going to be. I need to do more research to discover a topic but if I like the premise of the book, I feel that could be a good starting point. In my paper I plan on pursuing the topic of HIV/AIDS but if something I'm more interested in comes up during my research, I'm open to switching to another topic.
The book I checked out is called “The Fibromyalgia Story: Medical Authority and Women’s Worlds of Pain” by Kristin K. Barker. It was published by Temple University Press, and is a scholarly source. I checked out this book because I thought it might contain firsthand accounts from women with Fibromyalgia. After examining further, I realized that this may be more of a secondary source, and I might need to choose a different book.
ReplyDeleteI want to find a book about Fibromyalgia for this assignment, because I find it to be a very interesting illness, and also one that not many people know much about. I’m not sure what my specific focus will be, but I will choose one after further investigating the source I checked out at the library or finding another source.
The title of the book I found is AIDS, Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa by Ida Susser. The book was published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2009. I would say the book could be considered a scholarly source, as it was written by an Anthropology professor from CUNY. I thought this book would be able to give me some insight into what life is like living with HIV/AIDS, especially for the women in South Africa.
ReplyDeleteI would like to focus my paper on life through the eyes of HIV/AIDS patients. How the disease affects them, and how they feel about the metaphors associated with it.
Unfortunately, I was out of town all weekend and completely forgot about this assignment. I have not checked out a book from the library, but I will do so soon.
ReplyDeleteFor my first paper, I would like to focus on the illness of cancer or mental illness. I am interested in exploring cancer and the effects of its social construction on the patient (as discussed in Sontag). However, I have not previously interacted with a primary source on this topic and have yet to locate one. I may be interested in working with a film on the topic if I can find one soon. I am also very interested in the topic of mental illness and its social construction. Some of my favorite books on the topic include A Corner of the Universe and Flowers for Algernon (both fiction). If I cannot find another primary source, I would like to use one of these books – most likely Flowers for Algernon because it is a more “advanced” book and more likely to be considered “literature.”
I brought to class the book “The Metaphor of Mental Illness” by Neil Pickering. It is published by Oxford University Press, and I would consider it a scholarly source even though the publishing company may or may not have anything to do with the university. Pickering has a PhD and drops the names of numerous professors and doctors in his acknowledgement, and has eight and a half pages of references. I checked out this book (along with about eight others) because it is about how the medical community and experts in a handful of related fields consider some mental illness a complete fabrication. I thought it was a good example of a text that relates to the issue of how scholars and lay people alike view the mentally handicapped.
ReplyDeleteI am planning to write my paper about the film "i am sam". I want to use my background in film studies to analyze a specific scene as representative of what the scholarly community has to say about how mental illness is popularly viewed and (assuming I can find literature on the topic) how those afflicted with mental illness view those who are not. This will hopefully create some sort of parallel to the way AIDS is viewed in modern America, largely the topic of the class.
This weekend, I checked out the book Describing Death in America : What We Need To Know, which was written by the National Cancer Policy Board and the Division of Earth and Life Studies. I do consider this a scholarly book because it was written by an organization, rather than an individual, and was published by The National Academies Press. I checked out this book because I was interested in the title. After discussing the topic of death briefly in class, I thought about how many Americans do not often face the prospect of death and take every measure they can to run from it.
ReplyDeleteFor my first paper, I would like to focus on the play “Wit” by Margaret Edson. In high school, I watched a film based on this play, which highlights the life of a brilliant woman, a college professor, who contracts cancer and fights to maintain her sanity and a good sense of humor as her disease worsens. I think this is a great example of both portraying the effect of cancer and branching away from the general gloomy metaphor that surrounds it.
The books that I have requested from the library that have not yet arrived are W;t, a play by Margaret Edson, which I believe that I wish to use as my primary text source and a book about cancer and the affect on women. The primary text that I believe that I want to use for my paper is a play written by Margaret Edson, titled W;t. The play follows a woman who was previously a professor struggling with ovarian cancer. The play takes place in a cancer treatment center, where her only interactions are with her physicians and oncologists. I have also found multiple journal sources online that discusses the many metaphors and themes of this play.
ReplyDeleteLast Friday, after our unexpected snow day, I checked out a collection of short stories entitled "Parenthesis." Obviously, since there are a mulitude of stories in the book, there are a mulititude of authors. The editor, however, is RA Page, and the author of the story I am thinking of using as my primary source is a man named Adam Marek. The publisher is Comma Press.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to concentrate on illness as represented in modern literature. I had a couple of ideas, but most were too far outdated. After coming across Marek's story, "Testicular Cancer vs. the Behemoth," I think I will use it as the focus of my essay. The story is rife with allegories about cancer, and I believe is short enough and narrow enough to make a 5 page paper plausible.
I checked out a book called Diabetes as a Disease of Civilization: The Impact of Culture Change on Indigenous Peoples that was edited by Jennie R. Joe and Robert S. Young. It was published in 1994 by Mouton de Gruyter. This book is a scholarly source, not from the popular press. I selected this book because it looks into the effects of a life altering disease on a specific societal group.
ReplyDeleteAt this point in time, my plan is to write my first paper on the effects of a disease that is life threatening but not with as immediate effects as cancer or AIDS. I plan on using a book that I read for a literature class in high school as my primary source. I can’t remember the name at this point in time but the story takes place on an American Indian reservation where nearly 50% of the residents have diabetes.