Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

In this course, we will focus on the intersection of health, illness, social control and women’s bodies. This course combines classic and contemporary feminist and sociological ideologies to explore how health and illness have been defined and experienced for different women across historical time and space. We start the course addressing theoretical frames for understanding health and illness for women. We then explore women’s experiences with breast cancer, menstruation, sexuality, reproductive justice and childbirth. There is considerable attention to how conceptualization of women (and their bodies) as inferior has led to the medicalization and racialization of women’s bodies especially as they relate to pregnancy and childbirth which we spend most of the second half of the course exploring. Throughout the course, we highlight the role of women’s health movements in shaping how women’s health is understood, embodied and contested.

Student Outcomes

1) To appreciate the contribution of early feminists and sociologists to our understanding of women’s health. 2) To recognize how patriarchy shapes understandings and experiences of women and health along with structural inequalities of race and social class. 3) To understand the historical and contemporary impact of social movements on women’s health. 4) To explore the power of medicalization, and increasingly biotechnology, in defining women’s bodies.

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