STS 4021 - [Bodies in Medicine, Science, and Technology]

(crosslisted)
(also BSOC 4021, FGSS 4021) (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

Next offered 2012–2013. Limited to 15 students.

R. Prentice.

Every day we are barraged with cultural messages telling us to eat better, get more exercise, stop smoking, and practice safe sex. These messages make us insecure about our bodies: Am I thin enough, ripped enough, sexy enough? They are also contradictory: Fish makes you smarter; mercury in fish makes you sick. Many of these messages use the language of science and medicine: There are obesity “epidemics” and chocolate “addictions.” Our bodies are described and treated like machines: transplant surgeons talk about our “spare parts”; computer programmers describe their brains as “wetware.” Our sense of our bodies may feel improvised, created on the fly from a collage of scientific, medical, cultural, and advertising snapshots. This course draws from literature in science and technology studies, anthropology, and feminist and gender studies to examine how bodies emerge from the shifting lessons of science, technology, and medicine, as well as how cultural and political concerns express themselves in and through bodies.