Course Description
Queer and feminist theories have produced robust contributions to critical interventions on health, illness and disability, from critiquing gendered binaries at the core of biomedical knowledge to challenging exclusionary and dualistic models of mind and body. This seminar offers an overview of these contributions from the AIDS crisis onwards with a broad focus on transnational North American contexts. We will discuss a variety of foundational texts (including historical, autobiographical, and philosophical perspectives) alongside recent responses to the coronavirus pandemic while engaging with debates about the production and circulation of biomedical knowledge; issues of autonomy, care and patient choice; and embodied experiences of chronic illness, disability and vulnerability.
Core Texts
Audre Lorde. A Burst of Light: Essays by Audre Lorde. Firebrand Books, 1988.
Paula Treichler. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Duke University Press, 1999.
Rosemarie Garland Thomson. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Columbia University Press, 1997.
Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland (Editors). Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality. NYU Press, 2010.
Note:There will be (at least) one monthly Zoom session, beginning Wednesday November 11th, 2020 from 16:00 to 18:00. More Zoom sessions may be scheduled as necessary and I will offer weekly office hours over Zoom or phone by appointment.
The rest of the seminar will be taught asynchronously on Moodle.
Feel free to email me anytime with your questions or concerns: varino.sofia@gmail.com
- Kursverantwortliche/r: Dr. Sofia Varino