RACE, GENDER, HEALTH, AND MEDICINE

GEN&WS 539

Examination in depth of specific topics in the area of gender and health. Exploration of relevant health issues in social, economic, and cultural contexts, including public health and policy, and how they relate to gender, race, sexuality, disability, and class.

GEN&WS 525

Examines the contemporary global health project in historical and cultural context, highlighting some of the greatest sources of tension and struggle. Using a feminist lens and focusing on gender as key analytic category, explores the ways that the distribution of global wealth and power impacts health and well-being around the world. Explores social, demographic, political and economic determinants of global health, and the ways that these factors interconnect with biomedicine to create and affect health outcomes, both within and across countries. Drawing on critical theories, situates the study and practice of global health in an intersectional framework.

GEN&WS 103

Examines both physiological and social processes relating to gender and health across the lifespan among cisgender, transgender, and non-binary individuals. Examples of topics include hormonal processes, reproductive anatomy physiology, sexuality, sexual pleasure, chronic illness, depression, and sexual violence. A primary course objective is for students to connect information about their bodies and personal health to larger social and political contexts. In particular, considers how health and health disparities are shaped by multiple kind of social inequalities, particularly inequalities based on gender.

GEN&WS 529

Explores the contemporary science and politics of reproductive health in North America. Taught from a reproductive justice (RJ) perspective, a framework for analysis and action developed by Black women health organizers and scholars. Examines several aspects and applications of the reproductive justice framework itself; RJ approaches to pregnancy and birth; RJ as a diagnosis and refusal of eugenics; and RJ and abortion. Engages with case studies, scholarship, and theory from a variety of literatures relevant to public health: epidemiology, feminist and queer theory, critical race studies, gender/sexuality studies, activist and policy analyses, and historical and contemporary primary sources. Explores a variety of experiences and meanings of reproductive health and illness, as well as the relationships between health/disease and racism, poverty, sexism, hetero- and cis- normativity, colonization, incarceration, and environmental degradation.

GEN&WS 104

Provides an introductory overview to critical global health studies, linking past trends to current research and health inequalities. Examines current trajectories in disaster relief and public health interventions through a gendered lens, with a solid grounding in the historical context. Explores social, demographic, political, economic, and ecological determinants of global health, and the ways that these factors interconnect with biomedicine to create and affect health outcomes, both within and across countries. Uses an intersectional approach to analyze how public health policies prioritize whose lives represent "save-able" or "salvageable" ones in the public, political, and corporate eye.