You are here: Psychiatry Home > Teaching

Print View Login

Year 2

Emotion, Culture and Medicine II, 2008
The University of Adelaide Disciplines of Psychiatry and Anatomical Sciences

Summary

In 2008 Emotion, Culture and Meeicine (ECM) 2 will be offered in Semester 2 only.  It replaces ECM 2A and 2B, and thus these courses are restrictions for ECM2.  There are no prerequisites for this course.  However, study of Person, Culture and Medicine (PCM) 1 will be an advantage, but is not essential or assumed background knowledge.  Similiarly, previous studies n psychology and/or anthropology my be an advantage, but are not essential or assumed.

ECM 2 is an interdisciplinary course that combines theoretical perspectives from psychology, physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, and applies these to the complex human emotions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear.  ECM  considers the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of psychology, cultural anthropology and biological (or physical) anthropology and related disciplines (such as neurobiology), and thus encourages a critical perspective when drawing upon the knowledge generated from psychological and anthropological research.

The course requires attendance at three-hour seminar/tutorial blocks.  Assessment will be by say of one major essay, a presentation, including a write-up of that presentation, and student participation and attendance.  Formative assessment will be provided to students for summative tasks.

Course aims and objectives

The primary aim of this course is to foster an appreciation that complex human emotions pertinent to Medicine and the wider Health Professions are best understood through the integration of cross-disciplinary knowledge and methodologies from psychology, social anthropology and biological sciences.     Furthermore, the course aims:

• To provide a broad understanding of psychology, cultural anthropology and biological sciences (physical anthropology and neurobiology). 
• To appreciate that anthropology, biology and psychology can be complementary disciplines, and see that they often intersect.
• To develop an understanding of contemporary views of culture and its role in mediating human interaction.
• To develop an understanding of contemporary views of culture and its role in mediating human emotion. 
• To engender an appreciation of the evolutionary origins and cultural determinants of major human experiences.
• To encourage an understanding of the complexity of and variation in human responses to major life events.
• To apply these principles in developing an understanding of contemporary human social formations.

Further aims of the course are to provide an interdisciplinary learning environment that includes students from medicine, psychology, and the health sciences, with an emphasis on reflective learning,  open discussion that generates critical thought, and fosters a sense of enjoyment in learning.

Teaching Staff

• Associate Professor Anna Chur-Hansen, who is the course co-ordinator, from the Discipline of Psychiatry.  She will teach the psychological components of the course.
• Dr Susan Humer, a social anthropologist from the Discipline of Anthropology. 
• Associate Professor Les Koopowitz, a psychiatris from the Discipline of Psychiatry
• Professor Bob Goldney, a psychiatrist from the Discipline of Psychiatry.
• Dr Chris Wurm, a medical practitioner and Visitor Scholar in Psychiatry. 

For most queries you should speak with Associate Professor Anna Chur-Hansen in the first instance.  She can be contacted on 8222 5785 (work), 8272 3743 (home) or by e-mail at anna.churhansen@adelaide.edu.au

Timetable

Mondays from 2pm to 5pm over Semester 2.  The course will take place in Lect Th 2:51,  Level 2, Eleanor Harrald Building at the Royal Adelaide EXCEPT for October 13th when the class will meet in Lect Th 1:22, Level 1 of the Eleanor Harrald Building at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Date / Venue	Class content	Lecturer
27.7.08  EH 2-51	Introductory lecture, and psychology and emotion	Anna Chur-Hansen
4.8.08  EH 2-51	Cultural anthropology and emotion	Susan Hemer
11.8.08  EH 2-51	Psychology and Emotion	Anna Chur-Hansen
18.8.08  EH 2-51	Psychologyand Emotion	Anna Chur-Hansen
25.8.08 EH 2-51	Cultural anthropology and emotion	Susan Hemer
1.9.08 EH 2-51	Neurobiology and emotion	Les Koopowitz
8.9.08 EH 2-51	Psychology and emotion	Chris Wurm
15.9.08 EH 2-51	Psychology and emotion	Anna Chur-Hansen
13.10.08EH1-22	Cultural anthropology and emotion	Susan Hemer
20.10.08 EH 2-51	History and sociology	Bob Goldney
27.10.08 EH 2-51	Psychology and emotion, wrap up of course	Anna Chur-Hansen

Assessment

• Will be by way of one major essay, a presnetation and write up of it, and tutorial attenadance.
• Will include formative and summative assessment
• Students will be required to write one referenced essay contributing 50% to the overall grade.
• The essay will be up to 4,000 words in length, and require an interdisciplinary approach: that is, a psychological, social/cultural anthropological and biological emphasis
• Ways in which the essay can be approached will be discussed in class
• The presentation will contribute 25% of the overall grade
• The write up of the presentation will be up to 2,000 words and will contribute 25% to the overall grade
• Due dates for assignments are as follows: 
  •         Essay:                            Friday October 31st,  by 5pm
  •         Presentation write-up:   Friday 31st October,  by 5pm 
• Essay Topic:    How does the notion of "normal" human emotions impact clinical practice (either medical, psychological or both)?  Draw upon arguments from psychology, cultural anthropology and the biological sciences to support your arguments.       
• Presentation topic:   MUST  be approved prior to presentation by Anna Chur-Hansen.  The topic MUST relate to happiness, sadness, anger and/or fear and must draw upon at least one discipline (psychology, social anthropology, physical anthropology, neurobiology) but will preferably daw upon more than one, to demonstrate an interdisciplinary understanding.

 Other details

• All assignments are to be submitted to the Discipline Secretary of the Department of Psychiatry, Eleanor Harrald Building, Level 4.
• Students will be expected to attend all seminars and tutorials.  Attendance will be taken for tutorials.  A medical certificate will be required for non-attendance.  After missing more than two tutorials without a medical certificate, the student will be deemed to have failed the requirements of the course.
• Late essays will be penalised at the rate of 5% per day, where a medical certificate or certification from a counsellor is not produced.
• To pass the course, students must achieve a minimum standard of 50% iin all three summative tasks.
• Formative feedback must be sought from A/Prof Chur-Hansen at least once   prior to submission of the essay and presentation summary for assessment.  Formative feedback can be given more than once if you wish, and indeed, this is encouraged.   
• Students will present a 15-minute seminar.  Students will be allocated times and must select their own topic, with approval from A/Prof Chur-Hansen.  Students must present a logical argument that is supported by cited evidence.  Questions must be raised to generate group discussion.  Students who do not present a seminar as scheduled, or who do not present a seminar at a standard deemed satisfactory by staff, will be deemed to have failed the requirements of the course.
• Presentations will be assessed using the following criteria:

Introduction

Introduced topic, stated objective

Gained attention of audience

Established climate of interest

Body of presentation

Presented 3-5 main points in a clear and organised fashion

Provided supporting materials, examples

Used visuals, handouts, demonstrations

Conclusion

Summarised key points without introducing new material

Provided closure

Stimulated further thought

Stimulated discussion

Presenter dynamics

Enthusiastic

Used appropriate voice, gestures, movements

Encouraged active participation from audience

Used questions to stimulate thought and discussion

Kept to time limit

• Presentation summaries will be a 2,000 word report of the material covered in the presentation.  In addition, the summary must include reflection on what has been learned about presenting, and what would be done differently next time.  This section of the report must be approximately 500words.

The Rob Barrett Memorial Prize

 
The student with the most outstanding results across ECM will be awarded this prize, which is given in honour of Professor Robert Barrett, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, who conceived PCM and ECM and was a teacher in it.

Introductory Readings

The following texts are not compulsory reading.  However, if students wish to gain a preliminary grounding in the three disciplines represented in the course, the following are recommended.

Psychology:  Lewis, M. and Haviland-Jones, JM. (2000)  Handbook of Emotions.   (Second Edition), Guilford Press, New York.

Social anthropology:  
Hendry, J. (1999) An introduction to social anthropology:  Other people's worlds.   Macmillan Press, Houndsmills.
Lutz, C. (1988) Unnatural emotions: everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to Western theory.  Chicago University Press.
Milton, K. & Svasek, M.  (2005)  Mixed emotions: anthropological studies of feelings.  Oxford: Berg
White, G M. & Kirkpatrick, J.  (1985)  Person, self and experience: exploring Pacific ethnopsychologies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Physical anthropology:         
Jurmain, R., Nelson, H., Kilgrove, L. & Trevathon, W. (2001) Essentials of Physical anthropology.  Wadsworth, California.
Relethford, JH (2001) The Human Species: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology.  (Fourth edition), Mayfield, California.

Reserve Readings

A number of texts have been placed in the Reserve Collection of the Barr Smith Library to help you in the writing of your essays.  These are to be used in conjunction with references that you find on your own.

To find the references placed on Reserve, check the Barr Smith Library catalogue. 

Sources to search for literature

• The first place to look for references is the Barr Smith Library catalogue.
• In particular, use the electronic data bases.  This is essential and expected from tertiary level students.  In particular you should use:
• Psycinfo
• PubMed
• Sociofile
• Anthropology Plus
• Current contents
• Academic Search Elite 
• Cinahl
• Sociological abstracts
• The Annual Review of Anthropology is online and is useful for cultural and physical anthropology.
• The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, an electronic reference
• Ask the lecturers to help you find references.  In the first instance ask me (Anna), I can refer you to appropriate people or places.
• Maureen Bell, Psychiatry Librarian in the Barr Smith Library, is willing to help you locate references.  However, she should be your last port of call, not your first.
• Use your own initiative.  Assessors in these courses will be impressed by students who have made efforts to go the extra distance and visit other libraries, make contact with other experts in the field in question etc.

Other details regarding the essays

• Word limits must be adhered to.
• Use Times 12 font and double spacing.  This means there will be roughly 300 words per page.  Thus, a ECM essay will have approximately 10 pages of text
• No fancy fonts etc should be used on title pages.
• Handwritten essays will not be accepted.
• Essays that are late, without medical certification, will be penalised at 5% per day.

Referencing

• Essays must be referenced.
• This means that whenever you use a source to contribute to your essay, you must indicate it.
• Sources include books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers, lectures, tutorials and personal communications (discussions or letters where someone else gave you the idea).
• Where you do not reference your work, it may be considered plagiarism.
• Plagiarism includes writing material (from a sentence to a paragraph) from sources “word-for-word”.  If you take another’s idea, theory, data or opinion and present it in your own words, as if it were your own thought, and do not acknowledge your original source, this is also considered plagiarism.
• Plagiarism also includes copying from other students’ work, either a past or current students’ work.
• The university takes a very serious view of plagiarism: at the very least the essay will be graded as “fail”.  However, consequences can be far more serious, including dismissal from the course.
• ECM uses the Harvard (Author, date) system of referencing.
• Footnotes are not used in ECM.
• Bibliographies are not used in ECM.  A bibliography is a list of everything you have consulted for the essay, regardless of whether you used it in the writing up.

Harvard referencing: the reference list

• The reference list should include all references used in the text of the essay.  If the reference was not used in the essay, it does not appear in the reference list.
• The reference list is attached at the end of the essay.
• The references are listed in alphabetical order by authors’ surnames.
• Only primary references are listed (see below).
• If a book, the author(s) name goes first, then the date of publication, then the title (underlined), then the place of publication, then the publisher.  Eg: Johnson, T.M. & Sargent, C.F. (Eds) (1990) Medical Anthropology. Contemporary Theory and Method.  Praeger Publishers, New York.
• If an article, the author(s) name goes first, then the date of publication, then the title of the article, then the name of the journal (in italics), then the volume number (in bold) and finally the page numbers of the article.  Eg. Bolman, W.M.  (1995) The place of behavioural science in medical education and practice.  Academic Medicine, 70, 873-878.
• If a lecture or tutorial, give the lecturer’s name, the date of the session, the topic of the session and the course, the department and the institution.  Eg Chur-Hansen, (5/3/2006) Lecture, Introduction to psychological science. Person, Culture and Medicine.  Discipline of Psychiatry and Anatomical Sciences, University of Adelaide.

Harvard referencing: the body of the essay

• Author(s)’ surname(s) and date of publication are given when an idea is paraphrased.  Eg “Long (1999) argued that  ….” or “It has been argued (Long, 1999) …..”
• If direct quotes are used, then in addition to the name and date, the page numbers must be provided.  Eg Potter (1998) says that “a large proportion of 20th century clinical therapeutic practice was based on qualitative methods” (p 2) or “A large proportion of 20th century clinical therapeutic practice was based on qualitative methods” (Potter, 1998, p 2).
• If you have read about something written by the person who thought of it, that is a primary reference.  So, if you have read Freud’s original papers, they are primary sources.  Often though, we read accounts of original work – you are more likely in Years 1 and 2 to read descriptions of Freud’s ideas, rather than his own work.  These are called secondary references.  Secondary sources should be indicated thus:           Eg:  Freud (1917, in Beackon, 2000).  Only the primary source is listed on the reference list - in this example, Beackon, 2000 would appear but not Freud, 1917. 
• If several sources say the same thing, they can all be listed alphabetically, separated by semicolons.  Eg:  This has been described by many authors (Jacquier, 1984; Kennedy, 1975; Koopowitz, 2001).