The course PA 5690 (Section 1) "Race, Gender, and Health Policy" taught by Professor Sonia Santos meets Tuesdays/Thursdays, from 4:00-5:15 p.m.
PA 5690 (Section 1) Race, Gender, and Health Policy
Spring 2009
3 credits, Tuesdays/Thursdays, from 4:00-5:15 p.m.
Professor Sonia Santos (sbsantos@umn.edu; 626-2581)
“How can we possibly talk about reproductive health policy without addressing race, as well as gender?�? (Roberts 1997: 4). This question posed by critical legal scholar Dorothy Roberts in her book “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty�? (1997) is the fundamental question driving this course.
Course Description: We will discuss how race and gender (as well as class and sexuality) intersect with and shape health policies. We will begin with an analysis of feminist scholarship that theorizes the intersectionality of race, gender, class and sexuality in the production and reproduction of discrimination. Then, we will examine texts that provide concrete examples of how discrimination operates in the realm of health policy-making. Special attention will be given to the impacts of public policies on black women’s reproductive health. The readings will include:
‚ñ™ Amy J. Schulz and Leith Mullings, (eds.). Gender, Race, Class, and Health: Intersectional Approaches (2006).
▪ bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981).
‚ñ™ Cathy J. Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (1999).
‚ñ™ Dalsgaard, Anne Line, Matters of Life and Longing: Female Sterilization in Northeast Brazil (2004).
‚ñ™ Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (1997).
▪ Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity, Politics, and Violence against Women of Color." In: Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Formed the Movement (1995).
‚ñ™ Patricia H. Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004).
‚ñ™ Thomas LaVeist, (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Health: A Public Health Reader (2003).
Evaluation of student performance will be based on a combination of active seminar participation and role in discussion, essay, and a Local ethnographic fieldwork project (researching your local community through a particular issue of your research interest) in which the students are required to employ the concepts that provide the basis for the course.
