Françoise Dussart

Design and Research for Healthy Communities and Healthcare Facilities

UCHI proud to co-sponsor a virtual conference, co-organized by Françoise Dussart (Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut) and Sohyun Park (Department of Plant Science & Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut)

Design and Research for Healthy Communities and Healthcare Facilities

May 17, 2021, 9:00 AM-4:15 PM EDT
Registration is required.

While shifts in attitudes towards the design of community environments and healthcare facilities have been increasingly important in the last decades especially in Europe, the USA, Australia, and Canada, the new pandemic era reignites some perennial issues as well as demands for new solutions. Neighborhood environments, parks, children’s hospitals, birthing centers, aging care facilities as well as local clinics and hospitals have influenced health and behavior outcome, especially among the disadvantaged populations such as children and older adults. More than ever as Covid-19 disrupts our engagement with one another and the world at large forcing us to reflect and rethink the intersections of urban planning, architectural and landscape designs, and public health.

This Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference draws attention to the historical and contemporary contexts within which healthy communities and healthcare facilities-related projects get realized as well as how their performances and outcomes are measured. In a pandemic era, conference presenters explore how issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and age contribute intellectually and literally shaping designs and their execution. Drawing on theoretical frameworks and empirical observations, presenters explore insights and questions which arise through cross-disciplinary dialogues, and examine how social and identity politics shape the architecture of care and are working to build better healing spaces.

The day is organized around the following themes with invited keynote speakers and presenters for each session:

  • Architecture for Healthcare
  • Architecture of care during Pandemics
  • Landscapes for Health
  • Environmental Health and Human Health

This conference is supported by the Humanities Institute; the Office of the Vice President for Research; College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; College of Agriculture; Health and Natural Resources Department of Anthropology; Department of Plant Science & Landscape Architecture; and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

See the conference website for more details.

Please register by May 16.

You Should…See: Shoplifters (Françoise Dussart, UConn-Anthropology)

Cover photo of the five members of the household in the movie ShopliftersYou Should take the time to watch Shoplifters by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda who is often compared to Kurosawa, Bergman, and other great humanists of the cinema.

Shoplifters—inspired by a local news story—is the best movie I have seen in 2018–2019. And yes, I watch a lot of movies!

Shoplifters is a subtle Dickensian tale in a contemporary modern crowded Tokyo.

Shoplifters is about five members of a household: Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki a-k-a Sayaka, and Grandma who adopt a starving little girl Yuri.

Shoplifters is about the kinship bonds we develop with strangers we chose to love.

Shoplifters is about empathy, generosity, compulsive kindness and incredibly moving moments of joy.

Shoplifters is about trauma, fear of poverty and coming-of-age.

Shoplifters is about three generations of Invisible people in a cold and judgmental capitalist world.

Shoplifters is about people nursing secrets and lies which should never be revealed.

Shoplifters reveals a paradox that despite shoplifting, cheating and coning, Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki and Grandma create a happier life for little Yuri than her violent law-abiding parents.

Shoplifters is a magical film with overwhelming endings.

Oh, and You Should see Shoplifters because it requires reading subtitles…

Françoise Dussart
Professor of Anthropology & WGSS
University of Connecticut

 

Photo of Françoise Dussart

Who is Françoise Dussart? Françoise is a professor of anthropology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Uconn. Trained in France and Australia, her specialties in social anthropology include Australian Aboriginal society and culture (as well as other Fourth World Peoples), iconography and visual systems, various expressions of gender, ritual and social organization, health and citizenship. She is currently curating the very first major presentation of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts from Australia in Canada, at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City.