Feminist Bioethics: Whose Body, Whose Choice, Whose Ethics?
FGSS 285
Fall 2007
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
SISP 285, PHIL 284 |
Current developments in medical, genetic, and reproductive sciences, as well as changes in global politics and ongoing legal debates, seem simultaneously to ground and destabilize the answer to the questions "what is human reproduction?" and "what should it be?" Responding to this double-movement, this course will examine some of the key ethical and political issues raised by current applications and implications of new bio-technologies involved in alternative reproduction and practices of genetic testing. In particular we will examine these issues through the lens of feminist theory and feminist bioethics. Some questions which motivate our investigation will be: Are current reproductive technologies advancing our understandings of the body and the science of reproduction and, if so, to what uses are these new understandings being put? Are practices and applications of such technologies advancing feminist concerns or are they offering new modes of regulation? How might we best analyze and harness the potential of reproductive and other bio-technologies to challenge systems of political subjugation and practices of domination? On a meta-discursive level the course will also ask, how might our interrogations of such technologies as raising "ethical" concerns affect the re-production of such normative concepts as "good" and "natural" and political notions such as "privacy," "autonomy," and "rights"? The first aim of the course will be to examine how the political, legal and juridical regulation of such things as abortion, adoption, in vitro fertilization, and genetic testing both challenge and limit the ways women (and men) are capable of living their lives in terms of, for example, their reproductive choices, gender and sexual identities, and labor options. As a second aim of the course, we will pay close attention to the ways in which "bioethics" as both a sub-discipline in the field of philosophy and an object of public knowledge is itself being re-produced. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Ethical Reasoning |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA FGSS |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
TBA but will include classic texts in bioethics, feminist theoretical analyses, works from the field of science and technology studies, documents from policy groups, legal cases, and critiques from pop culture.
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| Instructor(s): Leighton,Kim Times: ..T.R.. 10:30AM-11:50AM; Location: FISK404; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 24 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: 0 | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 6 | FR: 4 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 10 | 1st Ranked: 2 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 8 |
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