Choose one of the prompts below (or contact the professor if you would like to propose a different project):
In what form should the story of the Tuskegee Study or the Guatemala Experiment be conveyed to the public? A monument, website, film, story circles, public school curriculum, theater piece, concert, poem? What about an R’Course at UCR? Propose a draft or model of this proposed public project. You can use any format: visual arts, theater, poetry, website, film, video game, school curriculum or something else. Consider past attempts to represent the study/ experiment to the public (films, news stories, public health advertisements, exhibits) and describe how your project would be different. How might your public project contribute to changing the culture around race and health in the 2020s?
How should this history guide changes to health care education, access, provision and/or policy? Choose an area of the healthcare field to focus on: medical school curriculum, disease treatment, laws about medical ethics and clinical trials, or public health institutions (especially the Center for Disease Control) and health care policy during the COVID-19 outbreak. Research the history of the area you have chosen and propose specific changes. How should the history of the Tuskegee Study and/or the Guatemala Experiment inform changes to this area of health care?
Scholars have debated whether Nurse Eunice Rivers Laurie should be understood as a victim or perpetrator for her role in the Tuskegee Study. Using both primary and secondary sources, research and evaluate Nurse Eunice Rivers’ involvement and responsibilities. What methods should we use to describe her role? Consider Deidre Cooper Owens’s description of enslaved women patients and nurses in experimental operations in the antebellum South. Would you consider Nurse Rivers’s role as similar or different to those women’s?
What forms of reparations are appropriate for the Tuskegee Study and for the Guatemala Experiment? Design a plan for reparations that addresses the specific facts of each study and their impacts on the broader society. The Tuskegee Study lasted 40 years and was based on the denial of treatment without consent. The Guatemala Experiment lasted three years (with some continuing exams over the following few years) and involved actively infecting subjects without their consent. Both studies were run by the U.S. Public Health Service and imposed on nonconsenting people of color, in a context of white power and imperialism. How should those similarities and differences impact our thinking about reparations? Consider our course readings on reparations. Who should be involved in making reparations, who should be involved in receiving reparations? What form should those reparations take, beyond cash payments to survivors and family members?
Choose a format:
This project can take many different forms.
If your project is a written report, please submit 5-6 pages (approx. 1500 words, double spaced).
If your project involves creating an object (website, video game, video essay, monument design, syllabus, grant proposal, ethics rules etc.,) please submit that object along with a 2-3 page (750 word) explanation of the object, responding to the items listed below. Describe the project in detail. Include a list of sources used (course readings and extra readings.)
Explain how this project relates to what we learned in our course, and how the content of your project responds to that knowledge.
Describe one or more precedents or models for this project. (You will need to do some research to find previous work. Please let me know if I can help you find relevant precedents.) What work has been done in this area before? What were the advantages and disadvantages of these previous initiatives?
Which communities would be impacted by this project?
How does this project relate, if at all, to your personal experience?
How will this project avoid the trap of imposing a research project on to communities? How might the project foster, build on, collaborate around community concerns?
Cite at least 2 sources outside of course readings (4 sources if they are simple websites.) Provide full citations in a consistent citation format.
