CGC Fall 2016 Schedule

Our plan for the Fall 2016 term is a collaborative workshop on documentary identification.

Thur Sept 29 - initial meeting, read "Introduction" to Breckenridge & Szreter (eds.), Registration and Recognition...

Thur Oct 6 - Initial exploration of three possible topic areas: consumer credit reporting, birth certificates, travel visas, read James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State, section on legal names


Thur Oct 13 - Attend Mark Kelly talk at 4:00 (note time) in Deady Hall (see Philosophy Dept events page for details) and/or additional seminar on Wed Oct 12 at 5:30 in SCH 250C

Tues Oct 18 - Three tasks each:

  1. read a contemporary source (Pearson, "Age Ought to be a Fact"

  2. follow a contemporary resource's footnotes 2 hops deep (and add it to the biblio doc)

  3. one of the following (and if you start one of these post a link to the blog):

•   find original resources (esp. periodicals from groups driving birth cert. stdndztn., or groups resisting)
•   find first-generation (or early years) birth certificate images (either state docs, or national docs)
•   timelines (use a prezi, include footnotes; zotero; Sarah will start this)
•   make a compendium of terms that would guide or research

Thur Oct 27 - Four tasks each...
 

  1. Each of us will familiarize ourselves with Sarah's initial prezi timeline (see the F16 Compendium doc in the G Drive)

  2. Keep maintaining bibliography -- upload docs you have and mark uploaded docs with a * (see bibliography doc for notes)

  3. Read 1 or 2 original sources each and add abstracts (two sentences or so) to the bibliography doc. See the Plecker entry for a sample abstract by Colin. We self-assigned the following to ourselves.

• Colin: Child Health Bulletin survey (or other)
  
• Bonnie: Cressy Wilbur
• Patrick: Grace Ward 
• Claire: R. Lenhart, "Completeness..."
• Paul: Manger, "Cooperation of State and Fed'l..."
• Sarah: Hemenway (or other)
• Laura: xxx 

  4. Read Dominique Marshall 2012 piece: "Birth Registration and the Promotion of Children’s Rights in the Interwar Years" (from the Breckenridge/Szreter volume from which we read the "Introduction")


Thur Nov 3 - [Meet 7:00 at Colin's House]

Read work and begin research on the following...

• Laura: Laws (fed'l statutes; and also state statutes for
• Bonnie: Census Bureau Model Law
• Colin: Census Bureau Birth Registration Area
• Paul: Rockefeller Foundation, ancillary agencies (cf. Marshall, p. 460)
• Sarah: Children's Bureau v. Farming and Agriculture (to have control over resources)
• Sarah: Am Med Association v. Children's Bureau (w/ regards to preventive healthcare vs. state medicine)
• Claire: ?Children's Bureau, 1912-1918 Birth Reg Campaign (cf. Marshall, p. 460)
• Patrick: ?Children's Bureau, 1924-? Committee for Completion of Birth Regst'n Area by 1930 (cf. Marshall, p. 460)

Thur Nov 10 - We will each conduct/continue research into the following areas for the next 3 meetings, and we will do so with an eye to two categories of analysis:

  [1] Stabilization - when do birth certs. stabilize?, e.g., when do they become easily usable by other technologies, forms,, practices?
  [2] Justifications or rationales given for birth registration (i.e., the '3 justifications' of demographic, sanitary, and legal reasons laid out in the Census 1908 pamphlet on "Legal Importance", p. 7) - which of these reasons takes priority and how? how are they separate/separable in the practices we are studying? do some map to biopolitics and others not?




Topic areas will be the following:

• Claire: Immunization, follow the trail of the American Medical Association
• Paul: The transition from the Children's Bureau to Census Bureau as spearheading the birth registration campaign.
• Patrick: private actor involvement in birth registration (e.g., insurance companies like Metropolitan Life and 'ngo'-style actors).
• Colin: continued research on Census Bureau actors (esp. Wm. H Davis) + additional research on American Public Health Association
• Bonnie: Track development of model law (legal dimension), esp. state statutes and regulations.
• Laura: (?) case law and court decisions (coordinate with Bonnie on state statutes)
• Sarah: (?) controversies such as Children's Bureau v. Farming and Agriculture (to have control over resources) or Am Med Association v. Children's Bureau (w/ regards to preventive healthcare vs. state medicine)

Thur Nov 17 -
continue research from last wee

Thur Nov 24 - [Thanksgiving Holiday - reschedule for Tuesday? - or take a by week?]
[no meeting]

Thur Dec  1 -
Four tasks each between Nov 17 and Dec 1:

* Continue to read from our own respective cases

* Read notes on Foucault's category of 'the switch point' from Wtr 2016 (sent around by Colin via email)

* Read selections from Foucault's 'Punitive Society' and 'Abnormal' referenced in the notes -- there aren't many pages actually referenced here so just read around.

* Experimentally write 300-500 words on how some aspect of the birth registration system (std form, model law, b.r.a. or something else) functions as a switch point in each of our cases* Continue to think about the way to frame this as an article in a current debate


Thur Dec 8 -
plan tbd