Health, Gender, and Sexuality

1 Course Unit

This course will explore gender and sexuality as areas of medical care and intervention. We will examine the complex relationships between health, gender, and sexuality, including the ways that gender and sexual identity affect health as well as how medicine shapes and defines gender and sexuality, historically and in the present. We will discuss topics including reproductive health and technology, gender and mental health, and gender-affirming medical care. Across these different areas, we will ask: how do gender and sexuality affect how health is experienced and healthcare is accessed? What forms of gender and sexual identity are embraced and fostered by medical practices? How should we understand the medical interest in gender and sexuality, and how do practices of health contribute to the continual redefinition of gender and sexuality? How do the intersections of gender and sexuality with other axes of social identity affect how medical care is experienced? Can anthropological ideas about gender and sexuality inform efforts in public health and clinical medicine to redress gender- and sexuality-based harms? Course readings will include work in medical anthropology as well as queer and trans theory and feminist psychoanalysis. Students will complete an independent project focused on a topic related to gender, sexuality, and health of their choosing. 1 Course Unit