WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2016-2017       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Life and Death: Relations of Biopower and Necropower


SISP 320
Spring 2017
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: SOC 320
Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory
Course Cluster: Disability Studies, Health Studies

This seminar is an advanced examination of how science and technology shape the politics of life and death. We will consider how science and technology have become handmaidens to human (and, in some cases, not human) life and death, impacting the social, legal, and ethical frameworks we use to define what constitutes the embodied, relational, and conceptual space between "alive" and "dead." Using theories of biopower and necropower as our guides, we will cover a diverse set of themes including sexual reproduction, birth, population, toxicity, decay, genocide, mortality, and the afterlife as they intersect with modern institutions of power. We will ask, How can we better understand the ways in which social institutions and actors deploy sciences and technologies to foster health or manufacture death?
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS SISP
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (CSCT)
Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50%

Last Updated on NOV-24-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459