Women\u2019s Studies will kick off its spring semester lecture series with a presentation by Dr. Talia Welsh entitled \u201cPunishing Parents for Bad Health Habits\u201d on Monday, February 14 at 5:30 p.m. in the Raccoon Mountain Room, UTC University Center.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have been surrounded with calls to better children\u2019s health given the increased scrutiny on the rise in childhood obesity,\u201d Welsh said.\u00a0 \u201cPrevious concerns about parental health habits, such as smoking and breast feeding, have laid the groundwork for connecting the behavior of adults to that of child health outcomes.\u00a0 I examine what kinds of ethical questions are raised in these discussions.\u00a0 To what degree do we need to worry about increased surveillance of family life in the pursuit of better childhood health?\u201d<\/p>\n
Welsh, UC Foundation Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Women\u2019s Studies Department at UTC, has published in child psychology, phenomenology, and feminist philosophy.<\/p>\n
Her translation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty\u2019s lectures in child psychology and pedagogy appeared with Northwestern in 2010.\u00a0 She is currently working on a project on the ethics of the war against obesity.<\/p>\n
\u201cSolitary Confinement: A Phenomenological Critique\u201d will be the second lecture in the Women\u2019s Studies series, to be presented by Dr. Lisa Guenther on Friday, February 18 at noon in the Raccoon Mountain Room, UTC University Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, more than 25,000 inmates in the US are held in solitary confinement in supermax prisons.\u00a0 Many of these inmates experience adverse psychological and physical effects such as anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, headaches, hallucinations and other perceptual distortions.\u00a0 I argue that, while psychiatric accounts of the effects of supermax confinement are important, especially in a legal context, they are insufficient to account for the phenomenological and even ontological harm of solitary confinement,\u201d Guenther said.<\/p>\n