Children’s health issues and the practice of solitary confinement for prisoners will be explored in the first two programs of the Women’s Studies spring-semester lecture series at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Monday: Dr. Talia Welsh, UC Foundation Associate Professor of Philosophy, will lead off the series with a program on “Punishing Parents for Bad Health Habits.” Her presentation starts at 5:30 p.m. in the Raccoon Mountain Room of the University Center.
“We have been surrounded with calls to better children’s health given the increased scrutiny on the rise in childhood obesity,” said Welsh, whose latest project examines the ethics of the war against obesity.
“Previous concerns about parental health habits, such as smoking and breastfeeding, have laid the groundwork for connecting the behavior of adults to that of child health outcomes,” she said. “I examine what kinds of ethical questions are raised in these discussions. To what degree do we need to worry about increased surveillance of family life in the pursuit of better childhood health?”
* Feb. 18: Dr. Lisa Guenther, assistant professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, will deliver the second lecture. Her topic is “Solitary Confinement: A Phenomenological Critique,” exploring the punishment technique that affects more than 25,000 inmates in U.S. supermax prisons each year.