Studies in Rhetoric
2019W Term 1
Instructor: Dr. Loren Gaudet
Class Meetings: TTh, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Rhetoric, Health, and Gender explores how health is rhetorically constructed and deployed. In this course, we pay special attention to how language and persuasion shape our understandings of health and how rhetorical constructions of health and gender intersect. Readings will examine the gendered body in relation to biomedical technologies; lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the role of medical diagnoses in meaning making; and problematizations of cancer, depression, environment, disability, addiction, reproduction, and risk.
By the end of this course, students will have developed not only a critical-rhetorical lens to assess health/medical information, but also an understanding of the ways that language may affect the production and circulation of biomedical knowledge(s) and its intersections with gender, race, sexuality, and disability. This course does not assume any background in science or medicine.
