Here you will find a very enjoyable play that, ordinarily (during a full-length Fall or Spring Term) makes up a full for-credit unit, complete with a Forum assignment. While Summer Term versions of 2060 are still very content heavy, I do reduce the amount of readings and assignments a bit, because there is only so much we can cover in six weeks. However, this play often proves very popular with students, and many choose to incorporate it into their final papers (which require you to write on two literary texts that we have studied). So I am making the text of the play and my (relatively short) video lecture available to you a week or two early. There is no formal assignment required for this play, but I encourage you to read it -- I think you will like it, and it may be a good option for you when it comes time to write your final paper. 

   Radium Girls: This contemporary (around 2003) play dramatizes real events from 100 years ago that you may have already heard of surrounding the legal trials of some factory girls who sued their employers to pay for the terrible mouth cancers they contracted through long exposure to Radium. As always, our analyses will stick closely to the text, and what it is saying about social justice, medical authority, corporate responsibility, and media representations of all those things rather than spinning to far afield into abstract discussions of our "real" contemporary world. But as you read, I think you’ll be struck by how “modern” the events of 100 years ago may feel. While our society has made drastic advances in medical research, drug and chemical safety, government regulations, workers’ rights, and fair access to the legal system, we still may have some of the problems this play tackles. Think about, for example, the constant push for “tort reform” which would limit individual’s abilities to sue corporations that wrong them or doctors who make mistakes. Think about how pharmaceutical companies still aggressively advertise their drugs, sometimes trying to almost bribe doctors to prescribe them, and how that can create problems (some of you will remember how Vioxx was a fabulous fix for arthritis pain, until it was withdrawn because it was causing many heart attacks). Think about public health issues like the lead contamination in the Flint Michigan water system. Or about how long tobacco companies tried to hide the link between smoking and cancer. Think about how many phony nutritional supplements are out there still today—A governor of Virginia was recently convicted for taking money to promote a bogus pill called Anatabloc made out of tobacco. Or about how often an internet ad will promise something like “One Weird Trick to Kill Diabetes” and it is, of course, just a scam. Think about the public health uproar about Ebola in the USA and that really messy mix of news reporting, opinion, public health officials, and reckless politicians (many of you will remember how, in a panic, the governor of New Jersey ordered a totally health nurse quarantined against her will just because she had been to Africa, and stoked public panic over it. Well, she sued him, teaching us—once again—not to mess with nurses!). This is just a long roundabout way to say that, while our task here is to interpret what the text is saying, not import our own opinions onto the text, what literary texts say is important. This one is still being staged and performed, and it might very well be nudging public opinion on all sorts of these issues.