Feminist Geographies of Health

This course will investigate the social, political, economic, and spatial processes that shape the uneven distribution of health, disease, and health care. Importantly, this happens through an intersectional feminist geographic lens. Beginning with a critical and broad understanding of what health is, the course will introduce students to how diseases and health are socially constructed and how health is experienced differently across space and population, as well as ways to historically ground analyses of health. This course will draw on examples from multiple scales, from the body to the global, and from around the world, although North America and the UK will be the primary focus. This course asks: How can geography help us better understand issues of health and disease? And how are health issues geographic concerns? How can approaching health as feminist geographers be especially useful? Some of the topics explored are expected and some unexpected. Overall, this course module asks students to think of differently and spatially about health and health care.  

• To introduce students to the field of health and medical geography and provide a critical review of the concepts and debates around health, from a feminist perspective;
• To study health broadly, approaching myriad issues from a feminist geographic perspective;
• To examine how health and diseases are socially constructed and have spatial implications;
• To consider the changing role of heath care institutions, systems, and workers in the world today;
• To develop various skills including critical thinking, analysis, and research, as well as developing argumentation skills;
• To develop students’ awareness of social responsibility through their sense of themselves as political actors embedded in relations, communities, and collectives.
   

This unit will be delivered through interactive three-hour sessions. Class sessions are highly interactive and participation happens in a variety of ways. Class time include discussions of the readings, small group discussion, analysis of sources and documents, film screenings, assessment preparations, and other activities. Come prepared to engage, discuss, learn, and create. Regular attendance and engagement is required to succeed in this module.

Learning is developed and assessed through a combination of individual and group assessments. Students have opportunities for formative feedback in class and office hours across the semester.

Students are required to read the assigned key texts and encouraged to read the recommended texts. Texts will be a mix of scholarly sources and popular media, as well as video and audio. All course readings are available through the University library.
 

• Explain the theoretical debates surrounding geography and health

• Apply a feminist geographic perspective to the study of health geography
• Interpret the spatial, social, and political construction of health, healthcare, and diseases
• Appraise and compare how historical and global inequalities shape health, healthcare, and disease

• Develop media literacy around health issues.
• Synthesize primary and secondary data to construct original arguments for different audiences.

• Communicate complex ideas in efficient and effective writing

Formative Assessment Task:   

Reflections on learning:  350 words x 3 over term

Feedback:  Cohort level feedback provided throughout the term in class and via Canvas.

Summative Assessment Task:

Summative Coursework 1: Group Project; this includes (a) group component and (b) an individual self-reflection form

Length: Equivalent workload to 1500 words per student

Feedback:  Group assessed. Formative feedback and support provided throughout term in class and office hours. Feedback provided through Canvas in accordance with University guidelines. 

Weighting: 50%

Summative Coursework 2: Individual Essay

Length: 1500 words

Feedback: Individually assessed; Formative feedback and support provided through class sessions and office hours. Feedback provided through Canvas in accordance with University guidelines 

Weighting; 50%

The tentative read list for week 1 is as follows:

Required:
Crenshaw, Kimberle. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139-168.

Bambra, Clare. (2022). Placing intersectional inequalities in health. Health and Place, 75: 102761.

Recommended: 
Metzl, Jonathan and Anna Kirkland (eds). (2010). Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, New York: New York University Press.  

Hirsch, Lioba. (2020). Thinking about Black death and (im)mobilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Geography Directions Blog, 26 May, available at 
https://blog.geographydirections.com/2020/05/26/thinking-about-black-death-and-immobilities-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

Navarro, Vicente and Leiyu Shi. (2001). The political context of social inequalities and health, Social Science and Medicine. 52(3): 481-91. 10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00197-0

Smith, Susan J. and Donna Easterlow. (2005). The strange geography of health inequalities. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30(2): 173-190. 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00159.x