Gender, Sexuality, and Health (332-0-20)

Topic

Health Activism

Instructors

Amy Partridge
847.491.5872

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-335: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

How do conceptions of "health" relate to ideological assumptions about gender, race, class, and sexuality? In this course, we will explore this question through a close examination of a range of activist movements that have attempted to challenge contemporaneous conceptions of health and models of disease. Case studies will include the 19th century birth control and eugenics movements, 1970s-era health activist movements (e.g. the women's health movement(s) pre & post-Roe v Wade; the gay liberation/anti-psychiatry movement; the Black Panther Party "survival (pending revolution) programs" and the free clinic movement it inspired), AIDS and breast cancer activism in the 1980s and 1990s, ongoing reproductive rights and environmental justice movement activism, post-Covid "mutual aid" projects, and current mental health activism in the era of psychopharmacology. In each case, we will consider how activists frame the problem, the tactics they use to mobilize a diverse group of social actors around the problem, and their success in creating a social movement that challenges contemporary medical models and the ideological assumptions that inform them. The course also introduces students to recent interdisciplinary scholarship on social movements.

Learning Objectives

1) Recognize and articulate reciprocal relationships between dominant scientific and medical models of health and disease, contemporaneous social movement activism in response to a health crisis or on behalf of a particular community suffering from X, and the transformation of activist participants' own experience of health/disease and, in turn, their sense of self/subjectivity.

2) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of interdisciplinary scholarship on social movements, which seek to examine and assess the influence of culture and power on movement participants and on shaping movement culture/group dynamics.

3) Develop the ability to identify, distinguish and assess multiple interpretations of instances of health activism through careful evaluation of the major assertions, assumptions, evidential basis, and explanatory utility of both activist and scholarly interpretations.

4) Reflect upon the way in which sociological research helps to elucidate how processes of "medicalization" and "biomedicalization" impact both the governance and the experience of health/disease, including the emergence of new forms of disease-based collective identities and new forms of health activism.

Teaching Method

- lecture
- seminar discussion

Evaluation Method

--2 short reflection papers
--2 creative/research assignments
--in-class midterm
--in-class final OR final research paper OR final creative project

Class Materials (Required)

All will be provided in Canvas.

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
SoC Individual and Social Behavior Distro