Social Perspectives on Women’s Health.

 The aim of this course is to uncover assumptions and conventions regarding women’s health and women’s healthcare, to examine how they came about, and to imagine how they might be changed. Readings (some of which are given below) and required weekly written responses (one to two pages) will be the basis for discussions about

Surviving Breast Cancer: Breast Cancer Blues by Gail Sulik

Breast Cancer as a Commodity: Promise Me by Nancy Brinker

Narratives of Breast Cancer: The Cancer Journals by Audre Lord, A Photographer’s Life

by Annie Liebovitz, Olde Tyme Mastectomy by Fanny Burney

Social Definition of Illness: Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag

Hysteria: Culture of Pain by David Morris, For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich,

Hystories by Elaine Showalter, Bipolar Expeditions by Emily Martin

Anorexia/Obesity: Unbearable Weight by Susan Bordo, Culture of Pain by David Morris,

            Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan, Do you Have to be Superhuman to Lose Weight by Tara Parker-Pope.

Wombs for Rent: The Baby Business by Deborah Spar, The Strange Case of Baby M by Katha Pollitt,  Death without Dignity for Commercial Surrogacy by Georga Annas.

Genetic Medicine: The Prospects for Personalized Medicine by Shara Yurkiewics, DNA’s

Power to Predict Illness is Limited by Gina Kolata

The Gaze: The Birth of the Clinic by Michel Foucault, The Woman Beneath the Skin by

Barbara Duden.