BIMD Seminar-Issues in Women's Health

This course will focus on bioethical issues particular to women's health and to women's healthcare experiences across the lifespan.  We will begin by exploring with a broad brush some of the distinctive contributions of feminist theory to traditional bioethics, focusing in particular on the feminist critique of abstract principals and the call to contextualize, as well as a larger commitment to social justice.  We will then narrow our focus to consider the impact of feminist theory on particular bioethical issues related to women's health and health care experiences.  Specific course topics may shift with each course offering, but will likely include some of the following: reproduction (pregnancy and childbirth, prenatal testing, abortion, assisted reproduction, contract gestation), sexuality (sexual autonomy, contraception), disease (breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, clinical research), lifecourse development (menstruation and menopause, aging, physician-assisted suicide), mental health (hysteria, bullying, body image), and configuring the female body (eating disorders, cosmetic surgery).  Course texts will consist primarily of critical essays with some literature and film.