Health, Illness, and Power in America
AMST 353
Spring 2024 not offered
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Crosslisting:
SISP 353 |
Course Cluster and Certificates: Disability Studies, Queer Studies |
In this class, we will explore the interlocking histories of health, illness, and power in America. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which discourses of the healthy body have undergirded notions of citizenship and belonging in the nation. We will consider how processes of disease, disability, and contagion have been imagined through the lenses of social difference, including race, gender, sexuality, and class. We will address civil institutions designed to manage individual and population health, and we will consider theories of political power in the making of the "modern" body.
Sample topics covered will include immigration policies and contagious disease scares; STDs and the politics of public health campaigns; physical fitness and the value of bodily labor under capitalism; the management of diseases that are symptomatic and those that are not; race- and gender-based approaches to medicine and medical difference; clinical trials and the ethics of human experimentation; regulations surrounding blood and organ donation; changing rituals of bodily hygiene; preventative medicine and the call to personal responsibility; mental health policies and institutions; and pride movements surrounding the "unhealthy" body. |
Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AMST |
Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)(HRAD-MN)(STS) |
Major Readings:
Sample reading excerpts (subject to change): Jonathan Metzl and Anna Kirkland, eds., AGAINST HEALTH: HOW HEALTH BECAME THE NEW MORALITY Adele Clarke et al., eds., BIOMEDICALIZATION: TECHNOSCIENCE, HEALTH, AND ILLNESS IN THE US Warwick Anderson, COLONIAL PATHOLOGIES: AMERICAN TROPICAL MEDICINE, RACE, AND HYGIENE IN THE PHILIPPINES Rickie Solinger, PREGNANCY AND POWER Malinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, CLINICAL LABOR: TISSUE DONORS AND RESEARCH SUBJECTS IN THE GLOBAL BIOECONOMY Hil Malatino, QUEER EMBODIMENT: MONSTROSITY, MEDICAL VIOLENCE, AND INTERSEX EXPERIENCE Julian Gill-Peterson, HISTORIES OF THE TRANSGENDER CHILD Sander Gilman, MAKING THE BODY BEAUTIFUL: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF AESTHETIC SURGERY Keith Wailoo, PAIN: A POLITICAL HISTORY Lauren Berlant, CRUEL OPTIMISM Lesley Sharp, THE TRANSPLANT IMAGINARY: MECHANICAL HEARTS, ANIMAL PARTS, AND MORAL THINKING IN HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE Margaret Lock, ORGAN TRANSPLANTS AND THE REINVENTION OF DEATH Harriet Washington, MEDICAL APARTHEID: THE DARK HISTORY OF MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON BLACK AMERICANS FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly short writing assignments, class participation, presentations, final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
N/A |
Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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