GWSS3203W: Blood, Bodies and Science

This course examines the contemporary politics of health and medicine from a critical race theory, disability-oriented, and feminist/queer/trans perspective. Who is understood to be deserving of health and medical care? Who should decide how to govern the provision of care? Who, if anyone should profit from life-saving medical treatment or medicines? How did we come to have the health system we have now? How have Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and people of color communities fought for access to equitable health care in the context of the racial history of medicine and health? Struggles for justice and equity in health and medicine are integrally related to the question of how society treats people who are in need of care. Topics include the history of DIY health movements; trans health care bans; the science and history of pandemics, including Covid and HIV; the history of health insurance; struggles for global equity in vaccines and pharmaceuticals; disability; reproductive justice movements; and the history of eugenics.

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